The Woman in the Riverbed
by dutchrub
Summary: There is a line where passion becomes obsession and the pursuit of truth becomes a deadly gamble. Temperance Brennan is about to cross it. Pre Soldier on the Grave. COMPLETE!
1. One Body

_**Author's Note:**__ I have reworked these first eight chapters because the end is nigh and I want this to be the best story it can be, especially leading into the sequel. That means tighter writing, as mistake-free as I can make it, and more fluidity._

_**New Readers: Please bear in mind that this story is not a piece of fluff, but follows the show's canon, which means just as much delicious **_**angst**_**. I won't give away the end, but I promise that unpredictable chemistry that Booth and Brennan have won't stay bottled forever. Additionally, the story is very case-centric; it is essentially a novel, and each chapter is, in MSWord, at least ten pages.**_

_I'm not trying to scare you away from reading—because I really want you to—but I realize some people are looking for a totally different type of fanfiction, and this is definitely not it. However, I hope you will give it a try anyway because I think if you like the show, you'll like this too. __**If you enjoy reading this, please let me know by reviewing!**_

-----

**The Woman in the Riverbed**

**By: Aurorarose13**

**One Body**

The day was blisteringly hot and dry, as it had been for over a month now since the drought first started. The grass was brittle underfoot, more in need of a good trampling than a cutting. The still air smelled of baked earth and roasted pine needles, and a chalky dust storm kicked up as many feet shuffled along the parched ground. Such unbearable conditions kept Anacostia Park in Washington, DC, devoid of picnickers, dog-walkers and other such recreation-seekers, which suited Special Agent Seeley Booth just fine, particularly since he was now looking at what appeared to be a murder.

He stood at the edge of a dried-up creek, his arms neatly folded over his broad chest and his sunglasses shielding his eyes from the setting sun. Still, he could make out the determined stride of a very intimidating woman gliding between two hulking SUVs.

"A dress. You're in a dress," he said incredulously when the woman neared.

Dr. Temperance Brennan was already snapping on a pair of latex gloves when she reached him. She wore a simple, sleeveless black dress that ended mid-thigh, a look that was very un-Brennan. The only thing that reminded Booth of the partner he usually worked with was the chunky black bead necklace and oversized pendant that practically covered the bare skin of her collarbone.

"Why are you saying it like that?" Brennan asked as she slipped a hair-band from her wrist and promptly pulled her long, curled tendrils back into a tight ponytail. This was a look with which Booth much more familiar—and comfortable. Sexy Brennan was, well, just that, and it made him remember he was not just her partner, but a strong man standing alongside a lovely woman—dangerous feelings to have in his line of work, so he was glad that he had conversation to distract him.

"Like what?"

"Like you forgot I had legs."

Booth threw his hands up in anticipation of the fight he felt brewing. "I'm not saying it like that."

"Well, you're staring." Brennan put her gloved hand on his shoulder and pushed him aside.

"I am not staring, Bones. I'm just not used to seeing you show up at crime scenes in anything other than work slacks and skirts so long a nun would approve." He steadied himself as she gave him the angry glower that told him how unbearable he could be. "That is a pretty short dress for you."

She sighed. "You interrupted my date. I had to take a cab here. And what do you care how short it is?" She never gave him a chance to respond before she said, "Where's the body?"

"In the riverbank, right there." Booth directed her head straight downward so that she was looking at some tawny protrusions in the dry wall beneath her. They might have looked like roots at first glance, but the longer one stared, the clearer it became that something wasn't right about the sharp angles at which they protruded. It was evident at once to Dr. Brennan that they were metatarsals—foot bones.

Booth continued, "Two boys playing soccer in the creek spotted the bones and ran home to Mommy, who called the police. They sent me in because they know you work with me, and this is a national park."

Brennan was proud that she had come first in that statement. So her little team of scientists was gathering notoriety in the ranks of the law—how utterly satisfying.

Still, now that she was here, it was time to get down to business. Her cool eyes scouted the desert-like scene. "Where's the rest of the skeleton? I only see the right foot and some of the phalanges of the left."

"We assume the creek eventually cut away until it unearthed the skeleton. The rest of the body is probably still buried." He mapped out a small rectangle in the ground to her left with his finger.

While she was carefully circling the suspected scene, Booth continued the conversation as casually as possible. "You were on a date, huh?"

"David and I were just sitting down to dinner when you called."

"You're still seeing _David_, and you're dressed like that." It wasn't a question but a statement heavily laced with disbelief.

Brennan placed her hands on her hips and zeroed in on his tight expression. "You disapprove of my look. You know, it's my experience, when observing the American male population, that the shorter the dress is, the more they like it."

"Well, not all American _males_ prefer simple sex to a meaningful relationship."

"You're implying I'm dressed like I'm out for a 'booby call.'"

"Okay, first, it's _'booty call,'_ and second, you look beautiful." Brennan blinked and dropped one hand from her hip; she hadn't expected such an answer. However, Booth continued, "What I'm saying is that Dick431 might misinterpret this change in appearance as you wanting more. He doesn't know you as well as I do, and he might not take this look as you just wanting to impress him, and instead he'll take advantage of you."

"I really wish you would stop calling him that. And what if I do want more? I'm a grown woman, and I can handle myself, in case you've forgotten. I'm thoroughly trained in several styles of defense—"

"All right. Can we just drop it? I'm sorry I said anything."

"So am I," Brennan said as she removed her heels and set them at the base of a nearby tree. She climbed down into the waterless creek and onto a short ladder that helped her better access the bones' precarious position. She began gently removing the flaky earth surrounding the bones with her fingertips. It was slow work, but she didn't want to risk disturbing the rest of the skeleton, as she wasn't sure exactly how it rested beneath the blanket of grass and soil.

"The left distal fibula is broken," she called up to Booth. "No, wait, not broken, smashed. The splintering here suggests a blow to the ankle, probably by something compact but wielded with a lot of force, like a hammer or a rock, because the talus is also cracked. Must have been very painful. I can't imagine the person could have run very far."

Unbidden images flooded Brennan's brain, bright swatches of light and shadow, a silhouette scrambling sideways across a park at nighttime and dragging a mangled foot through the damp grasses. Brennan blinked and tried to push the thoughts away, but the silhouette remained, limping, whimpering and terrified, one arm reaching out for her help.

As she delicately uncovered more bones, Brennan began to get a feel for this person. She despised psychology and scoffed at intuition, but she couldn't fight the overwhelming urge within her to know this person, to reveal an uncompromising truth as only bones could tell. She wasn't sure why she felt so connected—she tried never to be personally attached to a case, but there was something about that ankle, the malice in the spider-webbing of the bone…

Brennan cleared her throat. "We'll have to get the skeleton back to the lab to be sure of gender, but I'd tentatively say female due to the small size and slender construction of the foot bones. Also, stress on the heel bone suggests repeated wear of high heels."

"You're thinking foul play?" her partner asked.

"I'm not thinking anything yet. It's too premature to say anything definitively; I haven't seen the rest of the bones. But the fractured fibula suggests that this person had an enemy, someone who had a grudge, because the break was most definitely not an accident."

Booth hunkered down at the edge of the creek, his head hanging over hers like an umbrella. She couldn't see his eyes, but she could feel his stare—it was almost as hot as the sun on her back. "You know, I can't believe you bought all that stuff about his partner who found his wife online."

"Are we talking about the skeleton still, because I told you it appears the victim is female?" she asked with a confused tilt of her head.

"No, Bones, I'm talking about that… _guy_ you're seeing."

"David."

"Yes, _David_. I'd bet that was all a line."

"What was a line?" Booth lifted his glasses and gave her a penetrating look. She decided it was best to stop playing dumb, even though the look of frustration that flickered across his face was terribly rewarding. "Oh, you mean about his friends? Richard and Sherita, I met them. Good people. Their personalities appeared very well matched."

This seemed to faze Booth momentarily, but he dropped his sunglasses back into their favorite resting place and composed himself. "You've met them, of course." He paused to shake his head softly. "Okay, but are they in love?"

Brennan continued working on the exhumation unceasingly, but her answer came out as perfectly practiced as her skilled hands dusting the remains. "Love is form of attachment that develops from the meetings of similar interests and personality traits. So, yes, I'd say they are very much in love."

"No, Bones, that's a cold description, as lifeless as these _skeletons_ you cling to." She felt the tickle of a double entendre but denied herself the urge to explore it. "Love is unpredictable. It overwhelms you, consumes you, breathes life into you; it changes who you are."

She did not look up at him; she looked only at the bones and said flatly, "I guess we'll have to agree to disagree."

"I'll bet Dick431 would agree with me."

He got the rise out of her he expected—and desired. Brennan immediately climbed back onto the bank and towered over his kneeling figure; he let her have the height advantage this time. "Would you stop calling him that?" Booth smirked, but soon he was the one who launched to his feet when she added, "You're just jealous."

"Me? Jealous of a guy who seeks a booty call through the Internet? Any joker with at least one available hand could do that. In fact, I'll bet he was only using one hand during your little 'chats,' or 'pow-wows,' or whatever the hell you call them." His finger was in her face and his glasses were now in his pocket so he could stare her down without obstruction.

"I already told you, Booth, it's not a booty call. And if you're insinuating that he was masturbating when we chatted online," heads from surrounding crime scene techs began to turn their way and Booth shifted uncomfortably, "I'd say that's a very crass thing to insinuate. David is a genuinely nice guy, and we've been out on quite a few dates."

Brennan started back down into the creek when she turned and added, "And for your information, we haven't slept together yet, but I'll be sure to have you sign the permission slip before we do."

"See that you do," he muttered.

Of course, now there was no hope of her returning to work without saying everything she wanted to say. Like a seesaw, she came right back up and charged at him. She came so fast and so determinedly that he was forced back against a tree trunk and stumbled over her shoes. "You are jealous! There's another alpha male in the pack now, and he's seducing away your fellow pack members."

Finally, Booth regained some brain power and pointed his finger right back in her smug, squinty face. "All right, Bones, let me make something perfectly clear. This is not a pack, and if it were, I'd run the hell away as fast as I could. But even if it were, no one here is gullible enough to think he's more charming than I am."

"Who's more charming than you are?" Zack asked innocently as he appeared at the top of the riverbank with some baggies and a tray of tools. He looked bewildered, having walked in on a very loud, animated conversation at completely the wrong moment. They both turned their stony glares on him, and he backed up a few paces.

"No one," Booth said dismissively.

But Brennan, who wasn't finished embarrassing her idiot partner, said, "My David."

"So he's _your_ David now, huh?" Booth grumbled. He looked off to his right and over the phantom river, and wished he had his sunglasses for refuge from the eyes that watched him.

However, Zack was glad to be back in a conversation that made sense to him. He wasn't used to dialogue he couldn't comprehend. "Oh, Dave!" he said with a broad smile. "I haven't seen him around the lab in a few days. I was afraid you two had stopped seeing each other."

Brennan offered one of her slight smiles and a curt nod. "I was out with him when I got this call."

"Hence the dress. You look very alluring, by the way," Zack offered. "Would bring any American male to his knees."

"Thank you, Zack," she said with a triumphant grin and a poignant look at Booth.

But Booth stood there in shock, barely catching any of Zack's last words. "Whoa, whoa! _Dave's_ been by the lab?"

"Sure," Zack said. "He brings me brewskis sometimes."

Booth stepped in front of Zack, who hadn't expected such a forward motion; he was compelled to step back and cower a little. "Okay, never say 'brewskis' again; it sounds ridiculous coming out of your mouth."

"Yes, sir."

Lucky for Zack, the FBI agent turned back around to his main target. He scratched the back of his head, closed his eyes and then unleashed his deluge of irritation. "I can't believe you'd let this guy into your lab, Bones! He could be a serial killer looking for ways to hide bodies or cover his tracks."

"So could you, and they let you in anyway," she said levelly.

"But you met him online!"

At last, Brennan grew tired of the bickering. Her rage petered out, and she was left staring off into the evening sky. Talking about David reminded her of the fact that she was missing out on a delicious Middle Eastern dinner and soothing company. She knew she had to get back to the shattered ankle and the woman to whom it belonged if she ever hoped to eat again. "Why are we still arguing about this? I thought you wanted to drop it. Besides, it's going to rain soon, and I want to get the body out before the ground is soaked." She motioned to some ominous clouds on the edge of the sky to the northwest.

Brennan approached the gravesite and analyzed it with her eyes. Some of the grass and topsoil was peeled back where she had begun working, but there was so much more that they needed to do.

"Zack," she called. Her faithful assistant appeared by her side at once. "Get some samples from the surrounding soil for Hodgins. He should be able to determine the time since death from the chemicals and bacteria in dirt."

Zack immediately stooped to the ground and began scooping earth into evidence bags. "Right away, Dr. Brennan."

"And select some plant life nearest the body as well—bushes, saplings, things that have grown here for a while. Hodgins can compare the samples and check for a history of abnormal growth spurts or nutrients in their lifespans. May give us a more accurate estimation of time of burial."

"Sounds like a shopping list," Booth said with a roll of his eyes, then finally he slipped his sunglasses back on.

"By the way," the anthropologist added cattily, "you're picking up the cleaning bill for this dress."

He made no argument. The time for those was over.

Brennan turned her all-business gaze onto her partner. "Booth, what's the status on the recovery team? They should be mobilizing to remove the body from the grave. I can't do this all myself."

"You seem a little tense."

"Well, you put me on edge, and now those storm clouds are pushing me over it. If it rains now, in this dry condition, the scene would be in danger of a flash flood, and the bones could be washed away. Any hope of identifying the victim will literally disappear."

Booth grunted and picked up his walkie talkie to order a team to the scene.

For a moment, he watched her diligently work, the swift flicks of her wrist and the smooth flexing of her forearm bringing beads of sweat to his brow. She was immersed in her task, more so than usual, and he realized it was because of his cold demeanor. "You know, Bones, I didn't mean to upset you. I just think you're taking things a little too fast with this David character. I mean, how well do you really know each other?"

Brennan stared hard at the ivory whiskers protruding from the hard brown earth. The fractured fibula and talus glowed like a beacon, as though they were bigger than the bones themselves. She crossed her arms, and her shoulders sagged wearily. "How well do we really know anyone?"

-----

Two hours later, and the gray thunderheads were nearly atop the recovery party. Booth heard the first whip-crack of lightning, followed by the bellow of angry thunder. Not three seconds later, the first droplets of rain splattered onto the shoulder of his thousand dollar suit.

He stalked over to Brennan, who was now lying prone on the ground, her gloved hands carefully exhuming a long bone and her dress hiked dangerously high up her thigh. Despite the tantalizing view, he had intentions of telling her to call it a day, but then he caught one of the young technicians staring. Irritated, Booth promptly shoved a black duffle bag of tools into the kid's arms and firmly pointed toward the line of crime scene vehicles.

He turned back to the anthropologist, who had never even noticed. "Convenient," he thought. "She notices everything when you don't want her to, and nothing when she needs to see it the most." But he couldn't really fault her for it—that's what made Temperance Brennan such a captivating woman, and while Booth hated to admit it, such a feature appealed to his chivalrous nature.

Carefully, he said, "You know, Bones, you might want to take measures to pull down the hem of your dress."

"Why?" she asked, her voice echoing hollowly up from the grave. She turned her face ever so slightly up to him; she was most definitely smirking. "Am I making you uncomfortable?"

He crossed his arms and adjusted his weight from one foot to the other. Her question had startled him; he thought she was more perceptive than that. After all, she had been the one who stated men liked things like that. She should have known what would happen to all of the guys around her. "Uh, no, not me, the other—other_s_. Other guys. They're not concentrating on their work."

She turned back to her bones and said coldly, "Then get them out of here. I don't have time to change, and it's already started raining. There's still a third of a skeleton to exhume, and what I've uncovered around the skull shows it's very fragile. I almost cracked a scapula—me! There's no telling how much stress distracted investigators could inflict upon these bones."

Booth sighed; it was like talking to a wall. He took one last look at her dress and decided to be as bull-headed and forward as his partner was. He stooped down, slipped a hand under the hem, and pulled it swiftly down as far as it would go. Brennan's head whipped around and she glared murderously at him. "What do you think you're—"

But he was already walking away, trying to forget the way his finger had trailed along the delicate skin on the back of her thigh.

-----

Removing a radius from the surrounding earth proved more difficult than Brennan had imagined. For a reason she had yet to determine, the bones were disturbingly brittle, and the soil was practically baked around it from the heat—it was like chipping away at rock. With every fall of her hand adze, she worried that she might unwittingly hack into a nearby bone or other telltale clue.

It was true, what Brennan had said about almost breaking one of the shoulder blades. She had been chiseling away at some rock and soil around it, and a hairline fracture appeared. Luckily, she'd been gentle to begin with so the crack was minute, but any unnecessary roughness could shatter the bone. She remarked to herself that she'd have to remember to catalog her mistake later so that the fracture wasn't mistaken for a clue.

As she carefully brushed away particles of dirt, Brennan was still steaming about Booth's brazen decision to pull down her hem. What did he care if she were naked on the job so long as it was done right? How dare he touch her like that. If she had wanted to, if he had been anybody else, she would have broken his wrist before he could have stood back up. But she hadn't wanted to, and he was Booth, her partner. She allowed him liberties she would allow no other man in her life because, however dense he may be, Brennan needed him, the victim needed him, and that was what made her angriest of all.

While Zack took pictures, she glanced down into the grave and confirmed at once from the pelvis that the victim was an older female, one who had given birth and had physical complications for the rest of her life, however short that may have been. Brennan would know more when she had the whole skeleton laid out on one of the tables at the Jeffersonian, but from what she had cursorily observed in the grave, the victim was also heavy-set and Caucasian with ethnicity to be more clearly defined.

What was most curious about the grave, however, was the position of the skull. Instead of naturally resting at the top of the cervical vertebrae, it was still half-buried in the walls of the grave, next to the left shoulder, as though tossed in as an afterthought. Something about the unusual placement set off a firestorm of anger in the pit of her stomach. How could someone throw a life away like this? How could someone treat a person with such disdain, as though the body was the banana peel after the life force had been taken out of it?

She was dying to remove the specimen so she could properly examine it; however, the weather apparently had other plans. Despite the tarp some of the crime scene boys had thrown up, the ground was hot and balking the rain's attempt at permeation, and little rivers of water were already wending their way toward the downward sloping riverbank and the wide-open grave.

Brennan knew she had to work carefully and quickly if she wanted to extract all of the bones in time. If the rain didn't stop soon, the unwilling earth would funnel all the water right back down the riverbed where it belonged.

She extracted the adze again and decided to take back large chunks of soil with the bones if she had to, but she needed to get a move on. She respected this woman too much to leave her here, alone and unknown.

Brennan was in the process of removing the last of the ribs when Booth returned to her side. She tried not to think about his hot hand under her dress, or how mad she was or wasn't. She simply said, "Back for another grope?"

He groaned irritably. "You know that wasn't what that was about."

"And here I thought you told me David was the one who'd take advantage of me."

"I wasn't taking advantage of you, Bones. I was… protecting your interests. Let's put it that way."

He couldn't see her face, but he could tell she was rolling her eyes. "Is there any particular reason you're here?"

"I came to make peace with the natives." She said nothing. "And to tell you that the car is full. Zack needs more evidence bags."

Her irritation with Booth abated when she heard Zack hadn't brought enough supplies. "I can't believe he would compromise an investigation like this. Zack should know to bring an overabundance of materials for just such an instance."

"All right, no disrespect to the great and powerful Bones, but he's still in school. You have to make mistakes to learn from them. I'm sure you've made similar goof-ups when you were in school."

"Never," she said immediately.

Booth let out a short laugh. "Sorry. I forgot that not everyone is as mistake-free as Temperance Brennan. Never mind the fact that you slept with your professor, who used you to help himself on a case against us." As soon as it was out of his mouth, Booth regretted saying it.

Brennan stood up, brushed off her muddy knees and proceeded onto the ladder into the riverbed. He noticed her dress was damp and clinging to her body even tighter than before, the outline of her underwear teasing his eyes. He was thankful when the entirety of her body disappeared over the ledge as she angled herself toward the skull, which was easiest to work at from this direction and conveniently safe from his line of sight.

"Bones, Temperance, I'm sorry. I didn't mean—"

"It's fine, Booth," she said mechanically. "If you'll leave me to my work please? You can take Zack back to the lab, grab a few more evidence bags, and I'll be ready by the time you get back."

"All of the other crime scene techs have gone. I don't think I should leave you alone out here."

"She's been dead a long time. Nobody's coming back to check on her. I'll be all right," she assured him. Brennan still did not look at him, a fact which bothered Booth more than he cared to admit.

He wanted to apologize again, to say how much he really wanted to take back his words, but he knew he'd get no response, and more time would help him better formulate a more sincere apology. Instead, he nodded, whether she could see it or not, and walked back to the Chevy to do as he was told.

-----

It had been raining torrentially for twenty minutes now, so hard and fast that the city had been washed away into a turbulent ocean. Even if the sun hadn't set, it would still have been pitch black outside. As it were, the high intensity lights the techs had set up before leaving were struggling through the blankets of silver rain, pathetic little lighthouses that offered more hopelessness than promise.

Brennan dipped a jar into the grave and calmly but expediently forced the water into the now-growing creek. The grave was flooded with cold water, despite how sweltering the temperature had been a mere hour ago. Her fingertips were pruned and going numb, a treacherous state for a profession that relied on deft fingers.

But Brennan's problems did not stop at the state of her gravesite. The ladder on which she stood was now sagging down into the mud of the riverbed, and she knew without a doubt, if she stayed there much longer, it would sink in until she couldn't reach the precious skull anymore. She cursed herself for not removing it first, but she tried to rationalize that all bones in a skeleton were equally as important to solving a crime. Still, the pang in her chest remained as she watched the bubbling water lap teasingly against the eye sockets.

Brennan had never felt such pressure in her life to exhume a body, not even when she stood under gunpoint in El Salvador, or when she was running out of oxygen in her dive tank at a shipwreck in Antigua. She tried to keep track of which were droplets of sweat and which were droplets of rain, but the two had become inexorably mixed—they were the results of each other.

She needed to rescue this body. She couldn't explain why, and she wasn't sure she wanted to, but she knew she needed to do it.

Again, Brennan stepped up her retrieval efforts, always remembering the fragility of the bones but caring slightly less about it at this point because, with the water rising every minute, she couldn't afford to care about it anymore.

Finally, the majority of the water was mostly gone from the grave, and Brennan could see the hollow shell of the nasal concha. She placed a few vertebrae and some teeth onto the grass, and then grabbed for the skull.

A hard shuddering traveled up the aluminum rails of the ladder as the softened earth beneath it succumbed to the insist torrent, and the ladder swayed and tilted backwards. Brennan's arms reeled and she almost lost her tenuous footing, her knees slamming hard into the rungs above them. She breathed hard as she tried to steady her heart rate, but this proved to be no easy task. Conditions were deteriorating badly, and the ground was unstable, but the skull was right there.

Holding tightly onto the top rung, Brennan leaned forward, stretched her arm as far as it would go, but the bones remained just out of her reach. She took another two steps up the ladder, risking the stability of the top rung. She crouched awkwardly on the top step, her bare toes gripping the rippled aluminum. Her knees rested on the yellow label that said, "Do not sit or stand on top step!"

With her left hand, she grasped the side of the ladder and pushed herself forward slightly. Her right hand reached gingerly toward the skull. Her middle finger brushed the frontal bone and trailed down to the suborbital notch, right at an empty eye socket. The position was shaky at best, and she couldn't get a nail under the bone. Frustrated, she pushed further toward the grave and the ladder lurched forward. Brennan slammed into the moist wall of the creek, and all of the breath inside of her was forced out. Her chest ached, and she winced as she rubbed her collarbone tenderly.

The ladder was now sideways, still under her feet, but hopelessly crooked; she would have to heave herself out of the creek. At least now she could easily grasp the skull.

A low rumble vibrated through the ground. It sounded like an approaching train to Brennan, and she tried quickly to recall if there were nearby railroad tracks. It was already too late when she remembered there weren't.

A wall of water raced at her from down the once-empty riverbed, Mother Nature's pent-up fury hurrying toward her. The head of the flash flood was frothing like a rabid dog, and Brennan knew it would overtake her in a minute. She had to get that skull to safety or they would both be washed away.

Again she slipped on the slick aluminum, one foot falling entirely off the ladder and colliding with the creek wall. Desperate as she was, Brennan dug her toes into the earth and clawed at the mud as she neared safety. The rain clotted her eyelashes, and she could barely see above her. She grasped frantically at a root—no, it wasn't a root, it was a hand, for it was warm and gripped her tightly. Even though she desperately needed to be saved, Brennan knew she still had to get that skull—it was why she was here, why she was on this Earth.

"Hold on!" she commanded the hand, but it ignored her and kept pulling. "I said wait! I've almost got it." Her fingertips brushed the forehead again, and she reached with all her might.

"Stop fighting me, will you!" the voice at the end of the hand yelled.

"Just an inch more," she breathed to herself. "Please." She hooked her finger into an eye socket, and the skull pulled free of the mud. Words could not express Brennan's relief. She had done it; she could lay this woman to rest.

But as she neared the top of the riverbank, the great wave battered her knees, knocking the skull free from her feeble grasp. It spiraled in the air and fell with a melancholy splash back into the hole.

Brennan reached down desperately to grab it again. "Are you crazy?" the voice screamed incredulously. "Come on." The hand continued to yank, and just as she was pulled over the ridge, she watched the water splash against the nasal bone and finally suck it out into the tumultuous tide.

She tumbled over the ridge and fell hard on top of her rescuer. Of course it was Booth—it was always Booth. Brennan lay gasping and defeated on his chest. She wanted to cry and felt confident that the rain would hide her tears if they came. Booth was looking at her bedraggled face and body with concern, but she stared back at him with icy eyes.

Neither of them moved as she studied his face. The water that dripped off her body was boiling from her exertion, and Booth could feel the intense heat of her torso on his as though there were no clothes to separate their skin.

A rivulet of rain water traveled down her nose, over her mouth and dripped onto Booth's bottom lip. It slipped into his mouth, and he tasted earth, heat, and sweat, exactly how he imagined she would taste in those moments when he couldn't fend off his more basic instincts. He lifted his head slowly, ever closer to hers, not entirely sure what he was expecting but knowing full well what was driving his lips nearer to hers. He did not, however, expect what he heard.

They lay there in the downpour, her face mere inches from his. Brennan's voice was soft and in control, her lips working in slow motion, her eyes shadowed by the rain and her slick hair. "You know, despite all of my extensive studying, years of schooling and field experience, despite my doctorate and my intelligent colleagues—" She paused and took a deep breath, and her head dipped down until her mouth was blowing hot breath onto his ear. Booth didn't move, couldn't move. "Despite all of the education I've had, I can't think of a phrase for this moment." He waited, his hands moving involuntarily upward, dangerously close to her waist. "Can't think of a phrase other than, 'You complete… _idiot!_'"

She launched herself—no, catapulted herself upwards. Booth had never seen her so twisted with rage and anger. Her eyes were maelstroms of mixed emotions, none of which surfaced and stayed long enough for him to comprehend. "Did I miss something?" he asked helplessly from his recumbent position. "I just saved your life."

"No, what you did was cost that victim her identity!"

Booth blanched—no, he had not expected her to say that. "Well, I'm sorry I came back for you, too!"

She continued as though she had not heard him. "Without that skull, we may never know what killed her, what she looked like, or who she was. Parts of her skeleton were still in that hole, Booth, and they'll be long washed away by now."

"Bones, I've seen you identify a body from a _wrist_ bone."

"It's a carpal, and I can make identifications like that when they have distinctive traits and anomalies. From what I've seen of these bones, I can't guarantee that I'll be able to do that. That skull might have been our only shot."

"'Might' being the key word. You haven't formally examined them yet. Don't give up hope just because you didn't get what you wanted. At least you're still here to try for her."

Her heaving chest settled at his words, though her eyes were no less angry. Booth stood and moved closer to her. He fought the urge to grab her hand. "Temperance, you're the best at what you do. It was your life or the skull. I had to make a choice. You're more valuable to me—you're alive."

Brennan said nothing. She gathered the last few bones she had saved, dropped them in the evidence bags Booth had brought, and walked back to the car. She slumped over in the passenger seat as though what life she had left in her had been washed away with the skull of the unidentified woman. She was wet and cold, despite the energy she had just exerted or perhaps because of it.

How could she be so inept? She was a scientist, a forensic anthropologist, for God's sake; she shouldn't be so wrapped up in her cases—it was dangerous. Well, obviously. She had almost died, and she didn't even have the grace within herself to thank the man who'd saved her life.

"Dr. Brennan," she told herself, "you're the complete idiot." What would have been the point if she had died trying to rescue the bones? They both would have been lost, and deep within her heart, she knew she was the only person who could find out who this poor woman was. "Selfish, selfish," she thought.

Nausea tickled the back of her throat. She wanted to throw up at the idiocy that had originated in her own, so-called "genius" mind. What made matters worse was that she had been the one who caused the whole mess. If she had spent less time arguing with Booth, less time accusing everyone else of incompetence, if she had let others help her and stuffed her stupid pride, that woman would have a face and a name. She had no one other than herself to answer for it now. With this revelation, she felt an icy air pass over her and freeze the rain water on her body. It continued to blow right through her until it froze her soul.

When Booth opened his car door, he saw his partner furiously rubbing her naked arms. Her beautiful dress was suctioned to her body in a way that most men would have found alluring, but in this moment, Booth found it devastating. Her lips were pressed so tightly together that they were tinged blue. What little makeup Brennan had bothered to wear was cleansed from her face, revealing to Booth with a striking and intimate look at his partner. He resisted the urge to cup her flushed cheek.

Brennan looked at him, framed in the doorway, sheets of water dumping on his back. His hair was pressed around his face in little spikes that she had to admit—somewhere inside herself—were cute. "I'm… I'm sorry," she said finally. The words were so awkward, like nothing she had ever said before. She felt a modicum of pride that she was able to say them at all. "Thank you for saving me."

Booth climbed into the car and immediately began digging through his backseat. He withdrew a blue fleece blanket with "FBI" stitched in gold in one corner. He wrapped it around her shoulders and tucked it in under her seatbelt. "Don't worry about it," he said quietly.

"No, but I have to worry about it. You were right, and I was wrong."

"All right, Bones, stop right there. It's already cold enough in here without you freezing over Hell, too." She looked down at her bruised, knocking knees and offered a small smile.

They rode in silence for a while as Brennan went over the details of the bones she had collected. It would be clearer to her once she laid them out on a table, but already something was squirming in the back of her mind. The position of the skull was all wrong. Perhaps it had been severed from the neck. She'd have to examine the cervical vertebrae to be sure, but there had to be a logical explanation of its placement.

They were traveling down Virginia Avenue when Booth finally spoke. "So where do you want me to drop you off? Your place or David's?"

She looked up at him with a cock-eyed expression. "Neither. I need to get back to the Jeffersonian to examine these remains. The longer they sit in the backseat, the longer she has to wait for justice, and I think she's had to wait long enough already."

"You need to get some rest, Bones. You're exhausted."

"How do you know?"

"I can tell."

"How can you tell?"

He sighed and put a finger to his forehead. "You were nearly swept away by a spontaneous river, you screamed at me until your lungs caved in (either that or my ear drums did), and your final piece of evidence is at the bottom of the Potomac. That would make anyone tired."

She crossed her arms. "Not me."

"Oh, so you aren't so physically drained your body is trembling and ice-cold?"

"I am not ice-cold."

Booth slipped a hand under her damp ponytail and around the back of her neck. The fire of his skin was so hot, she couldn't find the words to argue. "Look, Bones, I'm not suggesting you pull a Rip Van Winkle—"

"A what?"

"You don't have to sleep for years, but you should take a few hours—you know, change out of your soaked clothes, dry your hair, put on a big, cozy terrycloth robe—and crash. You deserve it—you need it. Take my advice, for once in your argumentative life."

Brennan looked down at herself. She realized that even the blanket was losing its heating capabilities since it had absorbed the moisture of her body, and she was beginning to chill all over again. "Fine. My place it is."

Booth didn't say anything, but something in his movements—the way he settled back into his seat or how the corner of his mouth twitched upward—spoke of relief. He nodded and turned toward her apartment.

Once they arrived, Brennan invited him in. She tossed her keys on the table near the front door and headed straight for her bedroom. Booth took a seat in a kitchen chair.

In a moment, Brennan emerged in a familiar pair of jeans and a purple t-shirt, not exactly the terrycloth robe Booth had suggested, but it seemed to fit her anyway. She took a break from toweling her hair to throw some things at her partner. He unraveled the mass and found a towel of his own and a gray sweatshirt. Booth was on the verge of laughing. What a strange bit of clothing to be in her closet. "University of Maryland? You never went there."

"Very astute," she said with a smile. "Actually, that's where David got his business degree. His upper body is smaller than yours, but it should still fit. I'm sure he won't mind."

Booth's smile faded. He folded the shirt back up and laid it on the table. "Thanks, but I'll just change when I get home."

He went to stand up, but Brennan walked over, put a hand on his shoulder and firmly sat him back down. She pushed the shirt back into his hands and gave him a stern look. "Don't be so confrontational. Put it on. There is a direct correlation between being wet, cold and exposed to the elements, and physical illness. You saved my life; I don't want you to get sick because of it."

He looked at the sweatshirt, then at his own sopping suit, and decided it was the lesser of two evils. He removed his jacket and hung it on the back of an empty chair, and then he began unbuttoning his shirt.

"Would you like a drink?" Brennan asked. She had already grabbed a glass for herself.

"Do I need to check for bombs first?"

She smiled, but something about the question made her stop mid-stride. It was another memory of a time Booth had risked everything to save her. A wave of something passed through her, and it wasn't cold or wet or sad. Brennan couldn't be sure of what it was, but it was pleasant and she didn't mind it in the least.

"You all right?" he asked.

She glanced over at him. His shirt was off, and he was drying himself with the towel. It was funny, she thought, how he looked like he'd always been there, in that seat, in that moment. It was like he belonged. She assured herself it was because he had been there before, and he inevitably would be again. They were partners and friends. They were in each other's lives for better or worse, and today was a prime example of worse.

"Yeah, fine. What did you want to drink? I've got milk, orange juice, pomegranate juice, pineapple juice—"

"I get it, you've got a lot of juice. Do you have anything to take the edge off?"

"You mean like with alcohol?"

"Yes, Bones, like with alcohol."

She glanced from carton to carton, but nothing jumped out at her until she moved one of the juices to the side. With a triumphant grin, she presented a single bottle of Heineken. She gave it a little shimmy before Booth's astonished eyes, and he couldn't suppress a smile. "One bottle of beer? What's the expiration date on that?"

Brennan tried to put on a wounded face, but it only came across as amused. "I—it doesn't say." He stared at her. "Okay, so it's been here a while. Isn't it supposed to get better with age?"

"That's wine, Bones, and we'll split it."

"Oh, I don't want any."

"Look, if I'm drinking that dateless stuff, so are you." He pulled the sweatshirt over his head and had to laugh at how tight it felt across the chest. The tension made him feel good, like he'd one-upped this David character, but he couldn't say why he felt that way.

"It feels wrong, wearing your boyfriend's clothing," he said.

Brennan extracted two glasses from her cupboard and brought them to the table. She poured half between the two of them and slid a glass to her partner. "He's not my boyfriend, Booth. We're just… seeing where things go."

"And yet _his_ clothes found their way into _your_ closet." He took a swig of the beer, which was every bit as flat and tasteless as he'd imagined. He stuck his tongue out and frowned. Watching Brennan, he noticed she had much the same reaction.

"I thought we were going to drop this conversation. I'd prefer to talk about the new body at the lab."

Booth sighed. "Actually, you should probably take a nap. Might help you clear your thoughts about the case. You'll be better able to reason and do other squinty things if you're not so tired."

To his surprise, Brennan nodded. "You're right. I'll set an alarm for three hours, and I'll meet you at the lab."

"Why not take four? An extra hour will only make you feel better. And I could sleep on the couch; I'm pretty tired myself—I mean, that is, if you don't really care."

"Um, no, not at all. Sure, you're right. I should have offered."

He waved casually. "Forget it. I just mean, this is more convenient than having to take two separate cars and park in that god-awful garage. And you can save gas." He offered her one of his famous smiles, the one she called the "charm smile," and she was forced to concede.

She disappeared into her bedroom for a few minutes, only to appear again with some blankets, a comforter and a pillow from her own bed—Booth wondered if it would smell like her. "Wasn't sure how you like to sleep. I like thick quilts and comforters, so I brought one just in case." She set the pile on the end of the couch.

"Thanks," Booth said as he stood up and unbuckled his pants. Brennan looked startled. "My pants are soaked through too. If you don't mind, I don't want to ruin your couch or your blankets."

Brennan turned her back to him instantly. "Uh, no, I don't mind at all. I'll wake you in a couple of hours."

"Four, Bones, sleep for four," he called to her as she hurried into her room and shut the door behind her.


	2. Two Bodies

_**Author's Note:**__ Another edited chapter with more frills and clarified details. I've done quite a bit of tweaking to resolve some of my own questions about the timeline of this story, so it's worth a reread in preparation for the later chapters._

**------------------------------------**

**Two Bodies**

Zack Addy glanced up from the table at which he was working just in time to catch Agent Booth and Dr. Brennan come strolling in, both acting radically different than they had several hours ago. They weren't arguing anymore, but they didn't seem to have much to talk about either. A wave of concern washed through him as he was sure his mentor had gotten into some kind of trouble—Dr. Brennan was never quiet, particularly around Agent Booth, unless she had a good reason to be.

Jack Hodgins abandoned his soil samples in favor of gawking as well. His eyes needed a break from the tedious lab work, and he couldn't imagine a better show than a live action _Odd Couple. _They looked like quite the mismatched pair: Brennan in jeans and t-shirt, and Booth in a college sweatshirt and damp, wrinkled suit pants. Still, much like Zack, he was disappointed yet intrigued that the couple was uncommunicative.

Instantly, the man who could smell a conspiracy on a first-grader knew something was amiss, and not one to ignore the obvious, he charged headfirst into the situation. "I didn't know you were a Fighting Terp," Hodgins said amicably to Booth. The FBI agent narrowed his eyes on the particulates specialist, and Hodgins could have sworn he heard a small growl.

Dr. Brennan ignored her coworkers' stares and her partner's exasperation as she walked immediately to the examination table and hovered near her assistant's shoulder. "Zack, have you finished assembling the skeleton?"

"Yes, Dr. Brennan, at least from the bones I took from the site."

"Good. I have what I was able to obtain before the flash flood hit—"

Angela Montenegro, the Jeffersonian's resident facial reconstruction artist, strolled into the lab area with her usual sketch pad in hand. Her eyes were already wide with shock, and she'd only been in her best friend's presence for ten seconds—she believed this was a new record. "Flash flood, sweetie? You were in a flash flood, and you didn't call me? You're going to give me a complex."

Brennan nodded as though she hadn't heard the last part, but then again, she was skilled at ignoring emotions in lieu facts. She methodically opened an evidence bag, spilled three teeth onto the table, the remaining vertebrae, ribs, and hyoid bone, and immediately began placing them in their correct alignment. Quite a few bones were still missing: most of the distal phalanges from both feet, the scaphoid and lunate bones in the right wrist, the left patella and, of course, the skull and mandible, and all of the smaller bones connected to them; they were hopelessly lost now in the surging creek. Anger flared within the anthropologist again, but Brennan knew she'd have to make do without them.

While Brennan and Zack finished reconstructing the skeleton, Angela had time to ponder the strange appearance of the typically expertly-groomed Agent Booth. His hair was tussled and pieces of it were glued to the side of his face; it wasn't a bad look, but it was out of character. A faint shadow of beard rimmed his powerful jaw line, and she was pretty sure those were smudges of mud behind his ears. Coupled with the way his eyes concentrated on Brennan, as she slipped an ulna beside its radial mate, this piqued Angela's curiosity. He was studying the anthropologist, noting her every move as though she were one of the suspects in his interrogation room. Despite herself, Angela couldn't suppress a wicked grin.

She sidled over to Booth as nonchalantly as possible, parking herself against the railing that surrounded the main examination area. She had a devilish and determined sparkle in her eye, something Booth recognized at once and grew wary of. It was a gleam he was all too familiar with in his line of work—the gleam of suspicion. He was already on his guard when she leaned toward his ear and whispered, "You know, that looks an awful lot like one of David's shirts."

"Ha, does it?" Booth said as tightly as the Maryland logo that was stretched across his chest. He offered an awkward smile and then walked toward a surprised Hodgins.

Angela knew she would have to do some investigative work of her own outside of this case, but something was definitely up between her favorite crime-fighting duo. "There's something fishy going on," she said under her breath, "and I've got to find the right bait if I'm going to figure out what it is."

For the time being, however, she had to put that on hold. She noticed the frustrated way Brennan perused the skeleton, the tense manner with which she gripped the side of the table. "Where's the skull?" Angela asked innocently. Booth firmly shook his head, but she got the message too late.

Brennan did not look up from the bones when she answered, "I had it in my grasp, but somebody had other priorities."

Angela looked between the pair and watched the strange camaraderie they had when they came in fizzle in an instant. She pursed her lips. "Other priorities, huh? Wonder what _that_ means," she ribbed.

"Bones here thought a skull was more important than her life. I guess I just tend to disagree."

Angela intended to laugh, but the smile faded from her face when she noticed Booth's unflinching stare at his partner. "Oh, you're serious."

With a horrified expression, she dropped her clipboard onto a table and stalked over to Brennan. She grabbed her friend's hand and squeezed with all her might. "I cannot believe you risked your life for a stupid bone!"

"Technically, 22 bones—" Angela rolled her eyes and tapped her foot "—and I don't think it's stupid. What we do here at the Jeffersonian requires all of our focus and determination. I was merely trying to identify the victim in the quickest and easiest way possible so that someone can finally serve justice. Booth obviously doesn't value the dead the way I do."

"And thank God for that," Angela said, "otherwise you'd be dead too, and Zack would be the only one able to value you."

Brennan released an irritated breath, and Booth decided enough was enough. They couldn't keep fighting each other on this case if they expected to solve it as a team. He approached her with a soft, apologetic shimmer to his eyes. Like Angela, he wanted to hold her hand, but he knew, coming from him, it would be entirely misconstrued and he would end up on his back, courtesy of one of Brennan's Judo flips. "Look, Bones, we didn't start out this case on the right note. Can't we just kiss and make up?"

Brennan took a step back and glanced around to her coworkers, who were just as intrigued by this conversation as she feared they would be. "Are you suggesting we _make out_ to solve our problems?"

"That would be inadvisable," interrupted Zack, who seemed instantly defensive of his boss. "Work relationships are inappropriate and uncomfortable and adversely affect everyone around…"

Booth ran a hand over his face and through his hair, which was considerably better than the alternative that was passing through his mind: yelling at the top of his lungs at every scientist in the vicinity. "Gah, you squints take everything so literally."

"Science is literal," Brennan reminded him.

"Again with the literal statement, thanks, Bones. Is there no hope for you?"

"There's hope for me," Angela teased and offered a sultry smile, to which Booth responded with his own roll of his eyes while Brennan responded with a sharp stare.

"You know what," he said calmly, "I think I'm going to take a breather, walk outside and try and find somebody on the same _planet_ as I am." He abruptly turned and walked out of the lab area muttering something that distinctly sounded like, "Planet Squint."

Brennan did her best to look indifferent to his leaving. She told herself it was a good thing that Booth was going because now she had a chance of focusing all of her energy on the remains; she told herself this until she actually began to believe it.

Finally, she resumed her attention to the skeleton. The first thing she wanted to examine was the broken ankle, the bone that had sucked her into this whole ordeal from the beginning. She wanted to hold it, prod it, examine it until she found out why she was so affected by it. She needed a direct connection to it if she wanted to resolve this woman's death within her own sordid mind. She had a feeling she wouldn't sleep until she could do just that.

Often when she was introduced to a new skeleton, she would ask questions of it in her head. Of course, she would never own to this truth if someone ever found out about it, because it sounded awfully sentimental for the all-business Dr. Temperance Brennan, but the questions helped her figure out what had happened. The first thing she asked of the woman in the riverbed was simply, "Why your ankle?"

She chose the fractured distal fibula first and walked it over to the magnifier lamp. The bone itself was clean from years in earth but had taken on a drab brown hue. The break, however, was messy and difficult to reassemble as several smaller fragments of the slender leg bone were missing. This suggested not a single blow, as Brennan had initially suspected, but many forceful, intentional blows. The weapon had struck so hard and so often that it shattered the fibula entirely and connected directly with the for lateral mallcolus of the talus, or the outside edge of the thick knob of bone that makes up the ankle. The radius of the strikes and the dispersion of the cracks throughout the bone led Brennan to believe a heavy mallet or hammer was behind the torture. Still, the damage was even more severe than she would have expected in bones of normal strength and density, but how to resolve that?

There she was in Brennan's head, the victim, curled up against a wall, her head tucked fearfully under her arm and her left leg sticking out like a bent reed. She was sobbing so hard her breath caught before she could breathe back in. There was a black figure who hovered over her, a hammer poised above his head. The woman looked up at her attacker, her face in the shadows, and the figure grinned. Only the slick white glimmer of his teeth showed in the darkness. She watched as the brute brought down the hammer.

Brennan shook her head to dispel the morbid cobwebs of imagination. "Six times," she muttered in disbelief.

"Sorry, sweetie?" Angela said as she perused the skeleton for inspiration for her drawing.

The anthropologist directed her friend's eyes toward the magnifier. "Look at the fractures in this talus. Judging by the impact marks, I'd say the killer hit this woman at least six times with some kind of hammer."

"That's some serious hatred."

"And that's not the least of it. This woman suffered before she died. I can't even imagine."

Angela looked pale. "I don't think I want to."

Brennan faced her friend. There was an urgency in her eyes as she said, "We have to find out who this woman is and who did this to her. I'm making this case our number one priority until it's solved. Ange, do you think you can create a body reconstruction for her?"

"I'll do what I can, but creating the face is going to be difficult without an actual skull for me to handle. I'll have to work with the photographs—"

"They're already on your desk. I'm putting age between forty and fifty years, and height about 5'4" to 5'6". She was heavier-set, but not obese. Stress and wear at the knees and ankles suggests she was probably around 250 pounds for most of her life. Caucasian female, I didn't get enough time to examine the skull, but my preliminary findings suggested European descent. Hodgins can analyze one of the molars I saved for strontium isotopes; we might be able to definitively pinpoint a country of origin or geographic area. See what you come up with from the photos though."

Angela nodded, though she had no idea what strontium isotopes were; she figured she could cross that bridge when she came to it. She took a few more notes and sketches from the skeleton, and headed to her office.

About twenty minutes later, Brennan heard a quick swipe and a beep, and she knew Booth was ready for his next scheduled rendezvous with Planet Squint. "Back from the Land of the Living," he announced happily as he trotted over beside his partner. He rubbed his hands together eagerly, which caught her attention.

He had changed out of David's sweatshirt and was back in a suit jacket and shirt of his own. Brennan was surprised to find herself offended by it. She cocked her head to the side and stared at him. "Thought I'd change," he said when he noticed her sharp expression. "I was getting hot in the sweatshirt, so I left it in my car. You can get it later when I drop you off at your place.

"What'd you find out while I was recouping?"

Brennan wanted to play the smartass, to stonewall him to teach him a lesson, but she didn't want to delay the justice process for this woman any longer than her stubborn pride already had. "Tool marks on the victim's ankle suggest a hammer or mallet of some sort. Hodgins will analyze them as soon as he's finished with the soil and plant particulates. He should be able to specifically identify the weapon, give us a more concrete lead.

"And you're just in time for Zack's appraisal of the skeleton," she added brightly.

Zack blanched. "He is?"

"I am?" said Booth.

Brennan nodded. Zack was so shocked by the news that he nearly dropped his clipboard. "But I figured, since you were so attached to this case that you would be the one who handled the remains."

"Exactly the reason I want you to do it. You're more objective than I am at this point, I realize that. You're certainly competent enough to tell me cause and manner of death."

Apprehensively, the student approached the glowing examination table. The skeleton was elegant and ethereal in its repose, something to be respected and wary of. Zack cleared his throat and scrutinized the remains from the highest bone they had collected, the Atlas vertebrae, to the surviving intermediate phalanges of the feet. He jotted some notes down on his clipboard, handled a few bones in particular and set them nervously back down.

He kept glancing at Dr. Brennan, hoping for a look of advice or approval, but she merely watched him critically. He so wanted to impress her. This case meant a lot to her and, therefore, meant a lot to him. He redoubled his examination efforts, and finally he was ready to make his findings known.

"Manner of death is obvious: it's a homicide. Perimortem diagonal slice marks into the osteon of the right and left humerus, radius, femur and tibia caused by some sort of sharp knife, butcher's knife probably, well-sharpened. I don't see any unusual nicks or dull marks in the bone, but I'll have to look at the more closely under magnification.

"Substantially more severe vertical cut into the right clavicle, deeper than the others by several centimeters, but not COD. The uneven angle into the bone suggests she was leaning back when she received the blow, perhaps to avoid the weapon."

"Any damage to the Atlas?" Brennan asked.

Zack bent over the uppermost vertebrae and, after a minute, shook his head. "None that I can see."

She blinked. "None? No bisection, no curf marks, no tool marks of any kind? You're sure?"

"None, Dr. Brennan, but if you want me to spend more time inspecting it, I will."

"No, that's all right." There was that tickle again in the back of Brennan's brain, that innate knowledge that something still wasn't right. Why was the skull not connected to spine in the first place? Solving that could mean the key to everything in this case. Brennan smiled genially at Zack, and his shoulders relaxed. "You're doing fine. What is the cause of death?"

"None of these wounds are in areas near major blood vessels or arteries, but judging by the sheer number of them—and barring any head trauma that may have occurred and we can't see in the photographs—" he shot Booth a perturbed glance, "I'd say eventual exsanguination."

She nodded in approval, but something was bothering Zack. He looked at the cut marks again and frowned. "Dr. Brennan, you'd have to have a sound knowledge of human internal design to be able to place these wounds so carefully."

"Whoa, what does that mean? Is that squint-speak for something important?" Booth butted in. Despite his little jaunt back to his office for fresh clothes and stink-free air, his brain was still reeling from scientific jargon, and he could hardly make out two words the protégé had said so far.

"Very," Hodgins chimed in. "What Zack is saying is that our killer most likely has a background in or a passion for medicine or human pathology. How else would the murderer know to avoid all major arteries and organs?"

Booth contemplated. "Good question. Why wouldn't the killer just stab her a few times and get it over with? Less of a chance of being seen or heard."

"This wasn't about simply killing the victim," Brennan said mournfully. "This was about pain, torture and degradation; it was about making an example out of her. It was personal, the result of a carefully cherished and long-nurtured hatred. A better question would be what would drive this killer to such maliciousness?"

"What's with the sudden psychology, Bones?"

"It's not psychology," she said defensively. "Anthropologically speaking, you don't often see brilliant and precise cruelty of this kind unless there is a well-cultivated mistrust and hatred of some type of person or idea." Booth raised an eyebrow, and Brennan bristled under his skeptical gaze.

She continued more heatedly, "Think of what the Nazi doctors did to the Jews in World War II, or how ancient tribes like the Celts beheaded their enemies to possess their souls, or how the English government dismembered those who committed treason by hanging them until almost dead and then drawing and quartering them."

"_Braveheart_-style. I love that movie," Hodgins added with a nod of his head. "I should wear a kilt and then smack my bare ass at you."

"You do that," Booth said ominously, "and I _will_ draw and quarter you."

Brennan scowled at the both of them, and Hodgins reluctantly went back to his work, humming the theme from the movie. "See? Anthropology. Not psychology."

"Whatever gets us through this case," Booth grumbled under his breath, but his partner caught the sarcasm and narrowed her eyes.

"I believe the killer responded to what he or she considered an unforgivable social atrocity in a heinous and probably mentally unstable way—"

"Probably?" Booth interjected.

"—yes, but logical within his or her own understanding of the social framework." Booth had to relent; there was no doubt she knew what she was talking about, even if he didn't have a clue. He pretended like he got the point and let her go on thinking she had won the battle.

She turned back to her assistant, who was handling the right femur. "Zack, what other markings do you notice on the bones?"

Her assistant selected a piece of the pelvis and rotated it in front of her eyes, outlining some fibrous gray patches on the surface with his pinky finger. "There's scarring on the pubic bones that indicates a natural misalignment further complicated by Diastasis Symphysis Pubis as a result of pregnancy."

She nodded, and he squinted down at the right femur now back in his hand. He twirled it around a few times, weighed it and then mused aloud, "Uncommonly light bone for a heavy-set, middle-aged female. Two antemortem breaks which had been set and healed, I'd say, given the callus formation on the bone, sometime in her puberty, most likely brought on by an early onset of osteoporosis or some other bone disease.

"Of course, I can't rule out abuse after seeing these other wounds, especially since there seem to be a number of breaks throughout the skeleton, not just isolated to this femur, that weren't so carefully set and hardly healed at all. The freshest breaks seem to be on the arms and wrists."

"Defensive?" Booth asked.

"It's likely," Zack said. "I can sort of see a pattern, as though she was covering something, maybe herself—"

"Or maybe her kid," Booth said with a smug nod at Brennan.

"Other than the tool marks, I don't—wait." Zack pulled the magnifying lamp over to the bone and examined it more closely. "Looks like, oh, well, that puts a kink in things."

Booth inched closer to Brennan until he was straining to look over her shoulder. His hot hand pressed against the small of her back. She smelled earth and the outdoors, for he hadn't had the luxury of a shower like she had. "What? What puts a kink in things?" the agent asked.

"Gnaw marks." Zack scooted the magnifying lamp closer to the special agent. "Here and here." Booth squinted down at the pallid bone and, at first, saw nothing. Once his eyes adjusted to the brightness of the lamp, he noticed gentle troughs in surface, short shavings of bone that were missing. He imagined that if the victim had been alive for the ravenous feasting, she would have been in extreme pain.

He turned questioningly to Zack, who said, "They prove that she was left somewhere other than the park to bleed and be nibbled on before she actually died."

Brennan stepped in. "Nice work, Zack." Then she turned her attention to Booth. "This was much more complicated than a simple revenge murder. She was viciously tortured and abandoned to fear, panic and a slow death. The victim was probably killed somewhere quiet, private with little or no nearby human activity so her cries wouldn't be heard and the killer could keep tabs on her to make sure she didn't escape."

"And somewhere infested with _Rattus norvegicus_," Zack added.

"The common brown rat?" Hodgins said. "Well, that doesn't really narrow anything down. Hell, we have those here in the Jeffersonian."

"Any guesses on the sex of the murderer?" Booth asked.

Brennan frowned. "I'm not sure. Angela will have to run the scenario through the computer simulation system, putting in all the variables, but since the victim was of average height, and from the downward angle of the cut in the clavicle, I'd guess the killer was substantially taller, around six feet."

"That'd be one big woman," Hodgins commented.

"But we can't rule out the possibility that our killer is a woman, even if it's implausible. Obviously, nothing about this case is standard. Jack, take a sample of bone and test for collagen density and quality. We have to resolve this issue of brittleness in the bone. Could be our first solid lead to finding out who the victim is."

-----

Two hours later, Hodgins approached Brennan with excitement lighting his eyes. He waved a piece of paper tantalizingly in front of her, which she tried to grab and he yanked out of her reach. "Oh, the goodies I have for you," he teased. Brennan lunged for the paper again, but Hodgins was faster. One stern glare from her, however, and he handed it over immediately. "You're no fun," he complained.

She inspected his findings, and her eyes widened. "Excellent work, Jack. I can't believe how much you've been able to find out in such a short time."

He grinned broadly. "What can I say, I'm the ultimate multi-tasker, just ask the ladies." Booth, who had been standing on the fringes of the investigation waiting for a lead he could sniff out, snorted and rolled his eyes.

Undeterred, Hodgins continued, "I'm still waiting on the results of the strontium isotopes testing, but our vic was definitely killed here in DC and subsequently buried three years ago last spring. Trace from the notches in the bone indicate the weapon was indeed your common butcher knife. Not much help there, nor from the broken talus—your standard ball peen hammer. This killer, whoever he was, knew his stuff."

"He or _she_," Brennan corrected.

Hodgins acted as though she hadn't said anything. "What does help us is the fact that this woman had type one Osteogenesis Imperfecta."

"Of course!" Brennan said, shaking her head at her own incompetence. "I'd been saying it all along without connecting the dots."

Booth snapped his fingers to get her attention. "Is that supposed to mean something, because it sounds like an incantation."

"Magic isn't real, Booth, and what it means is that this woman had brittle bone disease, the mildest form, but it's still not very common, about one in every 30,000 births. Judging by the careful way these bones were set and maintained, I'd say she regularly saw a doctor for this condition, at least earlier in her life. Type one OI lessens in severity once the person gets through puberty and then worsens again postmenopausally, which she likely never lived to see. In FBI terms, this is good for us."

Booth narrowed his eyes in irritation. "Okay, I get it now, but if you squints didn't talk in code in the first place, I might be able to follow along instead of asking for translations every two minutes."

"Don't get on my case just because you didn't feeling like going for a doctorate."

He sighed and forced himself to end the argument. "So what's our next step? Find all the patients with this OI thing and narrow it down from there?"

"We shouldn't get ahead of ourselves, Booth. Hodgins confirmed the victim died in DC, but that doesn't mean she was from here. I still believe she emigrated from Europe. If we find out where she's from, we can find out where she's been treated. Angela should have a reconstruction done by now."

"Let's check it out then," Booth offered, and the pair headed silently to the artist's lair.

-----

Angela was just putting the finishing touches on the face she had reconstructed from the crime scene photographs when Booth and Brennan entered her office. She dropped her pencil and swiveled in her chair to greet them with a blank expression.

"How's it coming, Ange?" Booth asked as he chose a convenient leaning spot by one of the computers. Brennan took a seat on the couch and waited as patiently as she could manage. Still, she couldn't stop her index finger from tapping softly against her thigh.

Angela put down the facial sketch and picked up another tablet with a headless body on it. She tentatively showed it to the pair, who both looked confusedly at her.

The unfinished nature of the picture unsettled Brennan. Why hadn't Angela drawn the head on there too? Why draw it on a separate piece of paper? It didn't make sense. She had had more than enough time to complete the two drawings, so why didn't she connect them? On some level, it spooked Brennan. It was like the mystery of the misplaced skull had followed her into the lab, the one place she felt safe, and it wasn't about to go away so easily. Like two pieces of the same puzzle that couldn't connect any way you turned them.

"You were right, Brenn, about the woman being overweight," Angela said after giving them a few minutes to take in the drawing. "The more I looked at the body, the more I saw a sadness within her that she must have thought she could only counter by eating. I imagined her as a lonely, confused woman, who was looking for her place in the world, and who would do anything to find it. She was probably depressed, which is why I drew her pose as one of resignation."

Brennan took the drawing in her own hands. Angela was right, the woman looked resigned. In the drawing, her shoulders were slumped forward and she leaned to the right, a detail Brennan recognized as part of her disease, but the more she stared at the image, the more she realized that even if the woman hadn't been sick, she probably would have stood that way. Her hands hung limply at her side. If the woman had had a head, it would have been bowed in quiet pain. Brennan had no doubt this was what the victim had looked like.

"Why haven't you drawn her face?" she asked as she passed the drawing to Booth for study.

Angela cleared her throat. "This is where things get complicated."

"You couldn't get a sense of the face from the photographs? Don't you have some sort of technology for that—facial recognition software or 3D rendering? What about your Angelator?" Booth asked.

Angela wore a strange expression, one that said, "Don't shoot the messenger," and she passed the second tablet to Brennan. Booth sat beside his partner and peered over her shoulder. They sat silently for a minute, gaping at the reality the anthropologist held in her hand. "I didn't have a problem bringing the face to life. I had a problem connecting that face to that body."

Brennan ran a hand over the lovely pencil drawing. She traced the outline of a wildly beautiful, divinely sculpted feminine face framed by luxurious hair, a face that belonged to a girl with large eyes, a slight nose and a smooth brow. The healthy face of a healthy teenager.

"We don't just have one murder on our hands," Brennan said. She glanced back at Booth, whose dark eyes sought hers for clarification. "We have two."


	3. Three Hearts

_**Author's Note:**__ Another edited chapter with more dialogue and characterization. More work with the timeline to streamline the storytelling._

**-------------------------------------------**

**Three Hearts**

"I'm sorry, sweetie. I really thought my drawing would make things open and shut for you, and instead I've gone and made it more complicated." Angela stared at her friend, disappointment lacing her voice. She had unwittingly opened Pandora's Box, and the artist feared her best friend would take the news pretty hard, especially when she noticed the smooth, stiff glaze in Brennan's eyes.

For a reason Angela had yet to identify, the forensic anthropologist was more involved than usual in this case, and worst of all, she was making unusually bad judgment calls, as evidenced by her flirtation with death in the park last night. If this case dragged on, Angela didn't even want to imagine the toll it would take on Brennan. What perilous situation might she find herself in next, and what would she do when she actually caught the murderer? Something new was driving Temperance Brennan, and Angela, for once, didn't know what it was or from where it was coming.

But Brennan offered the artist a small, if forced smile. "It's okay, Ange. I knew something wasn't right. At least now I know what it is." Angela remained unconvinced, but allowed her friend the safety of perceived detachment.

Brennan then turned to Booth and began barking orders: "Get a team back over to the park and have them examine for other burial sites. They should concentrate their search beginning where we found the first body and fan out from there. Tell them to check for uneven earth, soft spots and sinkholes, any clue that there might be a body buried. We're now looking for another complete skeleton and apparently still looking for the first woman's skull."

Booth immediately dialed the Bureau, and within a minute's time, he was regurgitating Brennan's directives to the FBI's crime scene unit.

"I don't know if this helps," Angela began, "but when I tried to match the two drawings together, I noticed they sort of, you know, fit. Not really empirical evidence, I know, but I think, I think they might be related, probably mother and daughter. I compared the bone structures, and while one was definitely skinnier than the other, there's a unity to them. Maybe my artistic sensibilities are running away with me, but it makes sense."

Brennan surprised her by agreeing, something she hardly ever did without physical evidence in front of her. "No, I'd say that's a very logical explanation. It would explain their similar decomposition timelines and why the bones were buried together. The killer abducted the mother and daughter, then tortured them and disposed of the bodies."

The green hue on Angela's face implied she regretted saying anything about the possible relationship once she heard her friend's unflinching description of the heinous crime. Still, she wondered whether Brennan had made such a cold observation to educate Angela or to torture herself. "Yes, it's totally logical for somebody to torture and kill a mother and daughter."

The corner of Brennan's mouth twitched with frustration. "You know that's not what I meant." Before Angela could follow up with a lighthearted quip, Brennan had turned toward the exit and added stoically, "I think there's something that Zack will need me to check on."

"Sweetie, there's no way to know—" Angela reached for her friend's hand, but the scientist hurried out of the office without glancing back.

With a sigh, the artist put her drawings back on her desk, her fingers trailing across the daughter's penciled cheek. "It's not fair," she announced to the only other person left in the room, Booth. "She was so young, still in high school, I'd bet. How could something like this happen?"

Booth put a hand on Angela's shoulder and squeezed. "Bad things happen to good people, Ange. It's an unfortunate way of the world. You'd think you'd get used to it after seeing it so often…"

"But you never do," she finished. She smudged the pencil lines under the daughter's eye, adding a bit of softness to the face. Yes, she thought, this was the girl, whoever she was. This was the real face of wild, pretty child who had once had a future of endless possibilities snatched away in a hot, dark moment.

Booth decided to leave Angela to her work, especially since he knew his partner was somewhere in the Jeffersonian beating herself up for not picking up on the connection earlier. He knew it as surely as he knew it had rained yesterday evening.

On his way out, he heard a soft, "Booth?" He stopped in the doorway and turned to look at Angela, whose dark hair billowed out around her face like a melancholy halo. "Take care of Brennan, will you? She's really wound tight this case."

"Of course I will," he said with a nod.

And despite the solemn tone she had just set up, the makings of a wicked grin spread across cheeks. "Speaking of tight, where's that hot sweatshirt you were sporting earlier? That was a good look for you."

But Booth was not smiling, nor was he frowning—he was quite expressionless. "I'll bet it's a better look for David," he retorted and snapped shut the door to Angela's office.

-----

The hallways and catwalks of the Jeffersonian were normally peaceful, a reverence for the past permeating every nook. On any given day, their sanctity invited a person to walk through them to gather her thoughts, analyze data and interpret evidence. On any given day but today.

Brennan exploded out of Angela's office, ranting loudly and flinging around her arms madly in front of her. Fellow scientists and historians cruised past her with evident distaste in their eyes as she vented all of her pent-up rage. "How could I be so blind!" she cursed. "I'm acting like an damned undergraduate! This whole investigation I've been so, so… so focused on myself that I couldn't be the objective investigator I was trained to be. This is why I always keep a distance between the work and me."

Booth came trotting up behind her, tipping his head to the poor passersby and commiserating with a raise of his eyebrows. He wasn't sure what she was talking about—well, he often wasn't—but if there was one thing Seeley Booth knew how to do, it was to calm people down, to earn their trust.

He ran up alongside his partner and said, "You're making a scene, Bones."

She stopped dead in her tracks and turned all of her fiery gaze upon him. "I know I'm making a scene. I can hear myself, Booth."

He opened his mouth to speak, but when he noticed several nearby scientists were staring, he grabbed Brennan by the arm and led her down a more private hallway. "I know you're upset—"

"Upset? I'm not upset, I'm infuriated. I'm talking to myself, and I never talk to myself. I'm doing this—" she waved her arms wildly "—and I never do this. I'm losing control."

"Don't get ahead of yourself."

She sighed exasperatedly but finally ceased her flailing and placed her hands on her hips, a familiar pose that let Booth relax. "Bones, we've only been on the case one day. I didn't expect you to solve it already."

With downcast eyes and a resigned tone, she said, "I didn't expect it either, but I wanted to. I really wanted to, and I screwed up."

"Hey, hey!" Booth soothed, closing the distance between their bodies. He didn't reach out to touch her, but he wanted to. He wasn't sure that, given her obviously angry state, physical contact would be advisable (he didn't want to end up with a broken wrist or nose or a poked-out eye like some unlucky fellows who dared to touch her without permission), so he settled on a small wave to get her attention. "It's not your fault. You couldn't recover the skull. If you had, I'm sure you would have taken one look at it and plotted out everything but the damned roadmap to the victims' house.

"If you want to blame someone, go ahead and blame me. I was the one that made you lose the skull, I was the one that kept you from doing your work in the first place. But don't blame yourself, Bones. You're the best forensic anthropologist in world. Don't ever doubt your abilities."

She smiled at the tenderness. Between the two of them, it was hard to come by except in rare instances like this. She liked it. "I'm not going to blame you, Booth."

Booth rubbed his hands together eagerly. "Well, I'm all right with that too. In fact, I think I prefer it, because I really didn't do anything wrong."

"To be fair, if you hadn't spent all of that time picking on David—"

"All right, it's been decided. Starting here—" he drew an imaginary line in the middle of the hallway "—this is a blame-free zone. You cross this line, and all accusations must be dropped."

He offered her his hand, his own version of a white flag, and Brennan stared at it for a moment. She vacillated over what she should do until he said, "Come on. You have to cross this line to get back to the park." Still she waited, and he raised an eyebrow. "You're going to make me beg?" She smiled. "Fine, next time I promise to save the evidence before I save your life."

She grinned smugly, took his hand and crossed the line. "Now you're speaking rationally."

"What you scientists consider rational, I consider obvious insanity."

They walked a few paces before Booth remembered he was holding Brennan's hand, and he let go, embarrassed. He was glad Angela wasn't around to tease him, but he glanced over his shoulder just to be sure they were safe from prying eyes. They were.

"Why do I get the feeling that this agreement will come back to bite me in the end?" he mused.

"All good compromises involve a little give and take."

He stopped and put his hands on his hips. "Oh, and what exactly did you give?"

"I gave you my hand, and believe me, that was quite a sacrifice for me." Despite the cool tone in which she spoke, Brennan smiled haughtily.

"Remember that time when I called you a smartass?"

"Which one?"

He narrowed his eyes. "Yeah, well, I meant every letter of it."

-----

It had stopped raining a couple of hours ago when Booth had gone back to the Bureau to get the spare suit he kept in his closet (working with the squints involved a lot of literal dirty work), and now the morning air was soft and cool. Clouds lingered overhead, dampening what might have been a warm and sunny morning with a thick layer of gray cotton. A breeze picked up and sent litter skittering across the asphalt walkway to the Jeffersonian parking garage. Aside from the constant hum of DC traffic and the buzz of insects, it was as silent as a grave.

Brennan pondered that simile. She, of course, had heard it many times in her career as an anthropologist. "Silent as a grave," people would offhandedly say when the conversation ran dry at the dinner table or they remembered a quiet moment from their pasts. But Brennan didn't believe graves were silent at all. She had been in too many throughout her lifetime to know that, to the trained ear, they were loud, they told stories. The groan of earth on top of caskets, the dry hiss of sand or dirt seeping through cracks, the dull jangle of bones knocking into one another, the eerie whistle of the wind as it thrummed over an open site. In fact, if you didn't consciously tune the sounds out, you might go crazy, deaf or both. No, graves weren't silent at all, but very few people had Dr. Temperance Brennan's experience, and still less wanted it.

Booth walked several paces ahead of her. He had been strangely subdued since they agreed to call it quits on their blame game. Perhaps they now had nothing to talk about. When she thought about it, Brennan spent about as much time arguing with Booth as she did talking about their cases, probably more. They could never find the right balance between them, could never find a topic other than bodies to talk about civilly. On some level, it depressed her.

Brennan had admitted to herself some time ago that she liked Booth. However much they frustrated each other, they made good partners, the brains and the brawn, the yin and the yang. She could rely on him, a male trait with which she did not have much experience or success. But he was always there when he needed to be, when she needed him to be, and she appreciated that. And much like Angela, he was full of life.

She spent so much time musing over the dead that if it weren't for her friends, she would forget to live her life entirely. Booth reminded her of what it felt like to be alive, and she secretly admired that. His presence next to her made her feel oddly real, showed her that she didn't always have to cling to skeletons to find consistency. No, she would never tell him how much she valued their unusual friendship, but neither would she let herself forget it.

At the car, Booth unlocked his door and opened it. He glanced back to see Brennan was lagging behind, so he waited. Another breeze wrestled through the trees, and the bare skin on Brennan's arms prickled. It was chillier than she had realized or expected, and she shivered. Booth noticed her tremor, and he approached her. "Cold?"

He started to shrug off his jacket when a figure emerged from the blackness of the garage behind them and yelled, "Temperance!" Booth immediately slipped his jacket back on.

They both turned around and squinted into the shadows, and at last a man sporting a leather jacket, white t-shirt and faded jeans appeared. "David!" Brennan said in total shock. "What are you doing here?"

David approached her confidently and without hesitation grabbed her face and kissed her deeply. Brennan was floored, but she allowed herself to lean into the heat of the kiss, a welcome bit of contact after a damp and dreary evening. The whole time his lips pressed into hers, her eyes remained wide open. When he finally released her, she was pleasantly breathless and dizzy if not a bit confused. He snatched one of her hands in his own and rubbed his thumb along the back of her palm.

"I had to come; I was worried. I called your place, no answer. I called your cell, no answer, so I knew you had to be here. I figured it was because of the case that so tragically pulled you from your babaghanoush, but when I called the lab, Angela said you'd been in some sort of flash flood?" He rested his forehead against hers and held her gaze.

"It was nothing," she lied. "I lost some evidence, but I'm all right." When Brennan heard Booth clear his throat, she remembered she and David weren't alone, and she felt the immediate urge to disentangle herself from his grasp. "David, you remember my partner?"

David pursed his lips and reluctantly craned his head to the left to see the dark and tall FBI agent, whose arms were crossed stiffly and whose mouth was stretched taut. "Ah, yes, Agent Booth. Good to see you again, and not in an interrogation room."

"We could always arrange another meeting there if you'd prefer, or maybe you'd rather keep popping in to the lab like a regular Edison."

The wind kicked up again, and this time Brennan rubbed her arms. "Cold, Tempe?" David asked with concern.

Brennan was about to point to the car, in which she'd be safe and warm in just under a few minutes, but David's jacket was already off and over her shoulders before she could protest. "Thanks," she muttered weakly as she caught Booth adjusting his own jacket back onto his shoulders.

"Look, I just came by to make sure you were okay— Hey, is that my Maryland sweatshirt?" he asked, pointing to the gray and red pile on the seat through Booth's open car door.

Booth grinned devilishly and decided to exact some subtle revenge. "Oh, yeah, sorry. When I dropped Bones off at her place after the exhumation, she let me change into it because we were both, you know, soaking wet. And since we just crashed there for a few hours and then had to come straight back to the Jeffersonian, I didn't have a lot of time in between to get something of my own. Hope you don't mind."

Of course, he hoped David did mind; he hoped he minded a lot. The nerve of the guy, barging into an exclusive place like the Jeffersonian and then snooping around in his car. Booth would have given the sweatshirt back to David if he weren't so afraid the guy would just force it over Brennan's head. He didn't think he had the stomach to see Bones actually wearing an article of the man's clothing.

David glanced at Brennan, whose expression at Booth flickered between discomfort and fury. Finally, she turned back to David and offered an awkward smile. "I didn't want either of us to risk illness after Booth saved my life—he's the one who pulled me out of the flash flood. This case is really important to me, David, and I don't want to lose any time if I can help it."

To Booth's horror and dismay, David managed a smile and even kissed her again, briefly but passionately. And worst of all, he extended a hand to Booth, which he was forced to take. "You saved Tempe's life. For that, I'll give you the damned shirt."

"That's not—"

But David would hear nothing else. He squeezed Booth's palm, a gesture which the agent returned with vigor and then some. "Thank you, man, thank you. God, I really can't thank you enough. Keep her safe?"

"I always do," he snapped.

David kissed Brennan _again_, and Booth thought he would explode if he had to watch one more shoddy attempt at asserting his role as the boyfriend. "I'll see you later, darling?" Oh, Booth was positively fuming now. He hopped in the car without waving goodbye, but he watched them in his side mirror.

Brennan released his hand and nodded curtly. "As soon as I get the chance," she assured, but without the fervor David portrayed. She climbed in to Booth's car but did not glance back to wave.

Booth turned the key in the ignition and the engine grumbled to life. He checked his rearview mirror to see if he had a clear path over David's body, but the weasel had already sneaked down the garage stairs. "I don't get the attraction," he blurted out. "How can you actually _like_ that guy?"

"Oh, you mean because he's sweet?"

"I mean because he's annoying. He looks like a terrible kisser."

"I didn't know you planned on kissing him."

Booth rolled his eyes, and his cheeks tightened as he frowned. "He's got no fire in him, no uniqueness. He's an investment banker, for god's sake."

"David happens to find me interesting and charming."

"Interesting I can definitely see, but charming? That's a new one."

"His words, not mine," she replied rather deadpan. "He doesn't run the other way when I tell him about what I do, and he doesn't find me impossible, hopeless, and hapless like some people." She let her words hang for a moment so Booth got her implication.

"I don't think of you like that, Bones." Booth risked taking his eyes off the road to gaze genuinely at her. His voice was soft and serious, and Brennan couldn't help but feel a pang of something warm somewhere in her chest. Still, she fought it back because fighting with him was so much easier than letting him closer.

"But then what's with that nickname? Isn't it supposed to be an insult?"

"No! No way. It's, um, well," he stuttered, "it's an endearment."

There it was again. Silence. As silent as a grave, but Brennan heard the loudness. She heard her breath and his, her heart and his, the steady pounding of the tires over manholes, the whiz of passing cars. Silent, but not silent at all. "An endearment?" she managed.

"Yeah, like…" She waited, and he floundered. "Like, like 'partner' or 'buddy.'"

"Buddy…" she said disgustedly and then sat to stew in silence.

-----

When the pair rolled in thirty minutes later, the skies so choked with somber quilts of silver that no sun could squeeze through to cast even the softest shadow. Anacostia Park glowed with flashing red lights like beating hearts, high-intensity halogens that illuminated every blade of grass, and swiveling flashlight beams like the eyes of predators. Brennan could hear the newly refilled creek sloshing in the background, and she felt a pang in her chest at the memory of her lost bone.

The original grave site was worn down by the flood waters and spread open like a cadaver's rib cage, but nobody from CSU was around it, and Brennan couldn't see any promising blush of bone. Her heart sank. She had assumed that the daughter's body would be buried right next to the mother's, but apparently their killer expected that presumption too and planned ahead. It was an unfortunate portent, for it offered a glimpse into the cunning mind of her opponent.

Booth strode past her and approached one of the CSIs. "Don't tell me I drove all the way out here for nothing," he griped.

"Sorry, sir, but we've pulled out all the stops—cadaver dogs, sonar, old-fashioned digging— and still nothing. Only bones we found were a few from that site Dr. Brennan worked earlier."

Her ears perked up and her eyes snapped to the tech at once. "Did you recover a skull?" she asked with urgency, and the corners of Booth's mouth were weighted down from irrational guilt.

"Nah," the tech answered matter-of-factly, "just some shards of bone matter and two teeth. Nothing big. Sorry, didn't know you were looking for one."

Brennan lowered her eyes in defeat, but she quickly picked herself back up. She had more bones to examine, more teeth that were probably the daughter's, and every molar helped. "Show me what you've collected."

While the tech escorted Brennan over to a pile of crime scene goodies, Booth surveyed the area. The ground looked like it had seen a herd of elephants stampede across it; divots scarred the landscape, whole chunks of grass mysteriously vanished, and puddles of thick mud bubbled in the darkness. Men and women in windbreakers marked CSU combed the lawn with all sorts of tools that Booth had never seen before. It was organized chaos, his favorite kind.

He glanced over at his partner, who was stooped over examining a handful of what looked like white seashells. Her arms were now firmly housed in David's leather jacket, a fact which had snaked its way into Booth's mind and curled conveniently on top of the part of his brain he liked to technically refer to as his Frustration Lobe. First, he was made to wear that insufferable oaf's sweatshirt, and now Bones had to wear his jacket. There was an awful lot of David's wardrobe swapping, and Booth, for one, was damn tired of it.

Earlier that day Brennan had said he was jealous, and for the first time since then, Booth realized she could be right. Was he really upset by the fact that there was another guy his gang of squints liked? He thought about it, and yeah, it did bother him. That was _his _gang. David had only been in the picture a short while, yet he was already called by his nickname and given free reign in the Jeffersonian, whereas Booth had served his damned long time as pariah. He'd worked hard to become the leader, the one the guys looked up to and the one the girls, well, girl (Angela), crushed on. It had taken lots of coaxing, flirtation, bribing even, to earn their trust and respect, and even longer just to earn Brennan's. How was it that this guy was able to schmooze so easily into the mix? How was it fair? He looked again at Bones in that jacket, and he realized it wasn't. It wasn't fair at all, and instead of offering some sort of comfort, it just pissed him off further.

The anthropologist seemed to sense she was being watched, and she caught his gaze. Surprisingly, she flashed a short grin and motioned him over, a demand with which he quickly complied.

When he arrived, she shoved a handful of bones in his face. "Shards of the broken distal fibula and talus and two _whole_ teeth," she said cheerily.

Despite himself, Booth smiled. It was the first time since this case began that Brennan actually appeared in a good mood. She was the only woman he knew who rejoiced at the sight of pale white bone. Something about it was oddly attractive.

"So that's a good thing?" he asked.

"Well, of course. These puppies," she took a gloved finger and prodded one of the teeth, "could be the definitive link to where these women came from."

"You're awfully sunny all of a sudden."

Booth thought her smile was almost as illuminating as the floodlights posted around the park perimeter. "The more evidence the merrier. If I can't have that skull, I'll settle for a few bicuspids." She returned to the tech who had shown her over, and she resumed grilling him for details.

After another fifteen minutes had elapsed, Brennan returned to her partner's side with a baggie full of bones. "Well, they've searched the area twice with no luck and no leads, so I think our best option is to get this evidence back to the Jeffersonian and find out if Hodgins has had any luck with the strontium isotopes."

"I'm not sure I understand that whole isotope thing, Bones," he asked on the way back to the car. "Care to explain in words that people with an IQ of less that 175 can understand?"

She ignored the barb and said, "Strontium isotopes are normally found in soil, but when they make their way into the food supply and we consume them, they concentrate in our teeth and bones and are thus a reliable marker not only of the age of human remains, but also of their geographic origin.

"Because teeth form during gestation and early childhood, the type of strontium found in teeth mirrors that deposited in the bedrock of the area where a person was born. By comparing the isotopes in teeth recovered from the grave site with known strontium values for geologic regions around the world, you can pinpoint where any of us are from. Neat, huh?"

Booth stood there with his mouth hanging open. He was flabbergasted. He had to admit having a squint on his side was pretty damned convenient sometimes. "Well, what are we waiting for? Let's get ourselves back to that lab of yours and track us some isotopes. Hoo doggie!"

Brennan gave him one of her "I'll never understand men" looks as she climbed back into his car, ready to dive back into the case full force.

-----

Back at the lab, Brennan went straight for the skeleton and finished assembling it, adding all the parts she had picked up at the park the second time. When she finished, she stepped back to admire her work. She felt satisfied for the first time since she started the case; she had accomplished one thing, even if it wasn't what she had expected at the beginning, and now she was confident she was finally on the right track.

Just as she was scribbled the last of her preliminary notes, Booth entered the lab area with a sour expression. "No luck with the Missing Persons Database. I had the guys compare the drawings and the identifiers you provided with mothers and daughters who'd gone missing in the last three years. Nothing.

"I'm beginning to think the women weren't related at all, probably just some innocent girls suckered in by some charming, leather jacket-wearing serial killer." Brennan shot him the glower of death, but he pretended not to notice. "I think I'll have Devon over at Missing Persons run the girls separately and see if he can make a match that way."

Right as Booth was about to leave, Hodgins spun around in his desk chair and grinned from ear to ear. He had that air about him that he always did when he opened a window to a new lead, a sort of pompous but exhilarated aura that simultaneously irritated and delighted. "Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, cats and kittens, the results are finally in. Strontium isotope levels extracted from the molar samples match with levels taken in the Elbe watershed in northeastern Germany, specifically the Potsdam/Berlin area.

"I smell a road trip. Ich bin ein Berliner, right?" He winked at Angela who simply shook her head in exasperation.

"Keep dreaming, hon," she added with soft pat on his shoulder.

"Nice job, Hodgins," Brennan said as she perused the data he had printed out.

"Did you hear that?" he tittered to Zack. "She told me 'nice job.'"

"Big deal. My IQ is still higher than yours."

They waggled their tongues out at one another before Angela picked up a nearby pair of heavy duty shears. "Tone down the machismo, boys, before I start at the tongues and work my way down." She snapped the scissors twice in quick succession and relished the speed with which they returned to their duties. Angela gave herself a pat on the back and resumed watching her best friend's eager face.

Brennan turned to Booth and waved the paper in her hand. "Looks like we have a little more to go on now than just drawings and teeth."

He raised his eyebrows and leaned in conspiratorially. "Speak any German, Bones?"


	4. Category Four

_**Author's Note:**__ New bits and bobs abound. Grammatical mistakes have been corrected, and some extraneous issues cleared up. Also, some more witty banter spiced this chapter up a bit, I think._

**------------------------------------**

**Category Four**

The rest of the early morning hours were spent on the phone with German hospitals, asking about middle-aged, type one OI mothers receiving care more than three years ago. Unfortunately, all of the hospitals were unwilling to give him any information without a formal warrant, and Booth was sure even those that were staffed with people who did not speak English would have given him the same response if they could understand him. Laws over there were very strict about who could access medical records, and the situation was only exacerbated by the fact that Booth couldn't successfully work his American magic. He was to the point of throwing his phone across the room when Brennan approached him with a blank look on her face.

"Nothing yet?" Booth shook his head. "How many more do you have to check?"

He glanced down at the list another FBI agent had generated and faxed to him. It was full of long names and bright red lines, those hospitals that had failed to deliver. "I've spoken with all but one maximum care hospital in Berlin with specialists in brittle bone disease, and I've got two left near Potsdam to go. We're running out of sources here, Bones. Looks like we're going to have to extend our search area or get creative."

Brennan cocked her head to the right and smiled. "I like the sound of 'get creative.' Does it mean I get a gun?"

"It means we start lying out our asses to get the information we need to know. And there's no way you're getting a gun, Tex." She looked disappointed, but Brennan held out hope she'd get that gun one day, even if she had to "get creative" on her own time.

While she returned disappointedly to her assistant, Booth dialed the third to the last number on his list. A woman with a strict voice answered, "Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin. Wie kann ich Ihnen helfen?"

"Sprechen Sie Englisch?" Booth fumbled.

"Of course, sir. How may I direct your call?" She had virtually no accent; Booth was impressed.

"I'm a special agent with the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation. I need to speak with the director of Medical Records at your hospital. He speaks English too, right?"

"Of course, sir. One moment please." She sounded exasperated and quite relieved to be ending the conversation with him. Booth heard the snap of the hold button and then a serenade of soft Muzak while he waited for someone else to pick up. Perhaps the receptionist had called down to the director and warned him of an obnoxious American cop on the line for him, because Booth was on hold for almost two minutes before he heard a gruff voice:

"Medizinische Unterlagen."

"Good afternoon, sir, my name is Special Agent Seeley Booth, with the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation. I'm conducting an investigation into the deaths of two German women on American soil, and I was really hoping you could help me out." Booth tried to sound a little desperate because he was, and he was really hoping to appeal to this man's humanity. Any information at this point would be welcome, and if he had to beg, he would.

He risked a glimpse at his partner, who was bent over the skeleton's pelvis, dictating notes to Zack. Booth would do anything to help Brennan solve this case because, well, because it was important to her. If that meant stuffing his pride and begging, then he would beg.

"I am sorry, Agent Booth, but rules dictate that I am not permitted give out any information on our patients without a warrant from the government or Interpol." He sounded sympathetic, a good sign. "I am fairly sure it is the same way with your country?"

Booth closed his eyes and steadied his accelerating heart rate. How to attack this situation? What was this man's weak point? He could play up that they were two German women, perhaps eliciting the man's patriotism, or he could simply appeal to his softer side, but he couldn't do both. It would seem too desperate and might irrevocably turn away a potential ally. He had just one moment for brilliance, and Booth had to rely on his impressive skill list as never before.

After a moment, the FBI agent found the calmest voice he could manage and said, "What's your name, sir?"

"Heinrich Blicht," the man said warily, evidently ready for some American rigmarole. Booth has happy to disappoint him.

"Look, Mr. Blicht, I already know the medical conditions this woman suffered from. You're not revealing anything to me that I don't already know. If I give you the list of illnesses and identifiers, can't you just run them through your system and see if they match anybody? I'm not asking for much. Just a name. Just her name." Silence hummed over the line, and Booth could feel the man sniffing the bait.

"Please," he continued tenderly, not urgently pleading but carefully letting out a little more line on his reel. "These women need justice. They've been missing for three years, and somewhere out there is a family desperate for closure. Won't you at least run one simple search?

"If you don't find anything, that's all you have to tell me. I'll hang up, and you'll never have to tell anyone we've spoken. But if you do find something, just give me a name to go on, and I'll get that warrant and come back for the records legally." More silence and then Booth heard some faint clicks of fingers on a keyboard.

Without waiting for a go-ahead, he began, "She would have been a patient at least as far back as three years ago, probably longer. She immigrated to the States sometime around 2003 or earlier, so she probably requested a transfer of her medical records to a U.S. hospital. She would have been in her thirties or forties with type one Osteogenesis Imperfecta. And she had," he checked the notes Brennan had given him, "Diastasis Symphysis Pubis from having at least one child, a daughter specifically who we know about."

There was more clicking on a keyboard and then a prolonged silence that Booth assumed was from Blicht scrolling through possible matches. He tried to be patient, but after two minutes, the silence grated on his nerves, and he was about to ask what the man was doing when Blicht spoke. "I think I have found her, but can you give me any more details about her? Anything to make it more concrete. If I give you the wrong information, it could cost me my job."

Booth looked over his notes again. "She was heavy set, of average height. Um, had a history of fractures in her right femur around puberty. That's all I've got."

When Blicht didn't respond right away, Booth figured it was another lost lead. He cursed the impossible nature of this case, the clues that appeared and disappeared whenever they felt like it. Reluctantly, his finger hovered over the end call button on his phone, and he waited for an opportunity to say thank you and goodbye when Blicht whispered, "Ruh."

"Excuse me?" Booth could hardly make out a sound.

"Clarimonde Ruh was her name. R-u-h." A wave of excitement and relief washed through the agent as he reeled in a prize catch. He waited momentarily for further details, but Blicht said, "I am sorry, Agent Booth, but I cannot tell you anything more." Before Booth could thank him, the man hung up, and static flooded the line.

-----

The lab was bustling as it had been since the initial arrival of the skeleton, but now there was a unity to the commotion. Brennan's team worked as one entity to plow through mounds of potential evidence and leads. No one had said anything in a while, leading Brennan to assume that despite all their hard work, nothing would ever come of this case.

She hated to admit to herself that she could fail, but it had happened before, and it could happen again. No matter how hard she fought it, she couldn't stop the flood of memories from her visit to Sumatra after the 2004 tsunami. All those bones devoured and spit back out by the angry sea, piles and piles of them before her to be sorted and named, victims in a country without thorough and consistent dental or medical records. It was like a task from a Greek myth—an impossible task—meant to test her endurance, her strength and her mind. They were phantoms of a time that would never be given back to grieving families, because no matter how hard she worked, no matter how much she knew, Brennan would never know enough to identify the victims.

And now here lay a woman who needed her help, and even after she had employed all of her tricks, Brennan could think of nothing else to tease her identity from her bones. The feeling of helplessness was overwhelming and unexpected. She knew she shouldn't be so hard on herself, especially not at this relatively early stage of the game, but already something set these victims apart from those she'd worked with in the past. What it was, Brennan couldn't yet say, but if she was sure of anything, the person that had killed these two women was still out there, alive and thriving, delighting in his secret crimes and waiting for his next opportunity.

Suddenly, she broke the tense silence of the lab. "There is extensive damage to most major bones in the body—recent perimortem incomplete fractures to the femurs, tibiae and humeri, but there is one stand-out spiral fracture to the left radius and ulna, most likely from two hands twisting the bones in opposite directions." The whole team winced as Brennan revealed her findings. It was as gruesome a crime as they'd seen.

Hodgins, who looked particularly green in the face, said reverentially, "I can't imagine what the soft tissue must have looked like."

"Sounds like the makings of a monster," Angela added with a sad shake of her head and squeezed her clipboard tightly.

"Any noteworthy trace in the soil samples, Jack?" Brennan asked as she removed her gloves and smoothed down her lab coat.

Hodgins was hunched over a microscope, maneuvering a slide with tiny brown and green specks into view. He didn't look up at her as he answered, "Nothing. Absolutely nothing. No stray hairs or fibers. I can't even find any vestiges of clothing. Perhaps they were naked at time of burial."

"That adds a new dimension of gross," Angela muttered from the perimeter of the working area. "Tortured, stabbed, left for rat food, and now sexually abused. This is one sick puppy."

"Reason enough to redouble our efforts," Brennan announced with a firm crossing of her arms. "There's always something to be found if we look hard enough."

Angela observed her best friend's determined posture, the stiff line of her mouth as she stared off in the distance and the growing circles under her eyes. Brennan had worked ceaselessly through the night; well, they all had, but none so hard and so passionately as the anthropologist, and it was obviously taking its toll.

Angela sidled over to Brennan and knocked lightly into her. "Hey, you, you okay?"

"Fine. Why?"

"I'm worried you're overtaxing yourself, Brenn. You don't look so hot."

"This is my job, Angela. I don't need to look hot to tell the age, sex and time of death of a skeleton. I don't have anyone to impress." Despite the way she had intended it, however, the conviction was missing from the last sentence she had said, and quite against her will, Brennan found her hand reaching up to remove the ponytail holder from her hair. With a gentle swoosh, her auburn locks tumbled to her shoulders and she shook away the tightness from restraint.

Of all the people she did not want to lose control around, Angela was at the top of the list. She was an artist and notoriously perceptive, a fact of which Brennan was regretfully reminded when she lifted an eyebrow at this subtle motion. "I mean you look tired. But if you're worried about how you look in front of Booth, let me put your fears to rest. You're gorgeous, sweetie. You've got that 'honey, I just got out of bed' style going on. You should totally flaunt it."

With a low growl, Brennan immediately returned her hair to the ponytail, even though it had felt mighty good down. She didn't want to send the wrong signals to people. Yes, she liked Booth, but they were just partners in a symbiotic relationship. Anthropology. That was what life all boiled down to.

"I don't know why you fight it, sweetie. You guys have some major chemistry going on. You should take advantage of it."

"I'm dating David," Brennan hissed under her breath. She had become increasingly aware of the attention her fellow team members were paying to their private conversation, and she didn't like it one bit. She glanced furtively over at Booth, who was down on the general floor having a very tense conversation with someone on the other end of the phone. She prayed it was good news.

"Dating ain't exactly married," Angela replied with a piercing stare.

Brennan uttered the most frustrated sigh she thought she'd ever conceived, so deep and guttural that it rumbled through her lithe frame. Brennan was skilled at making others run in circles, but Angela always had the knack for turning the favor back to her. "You have successfully convinced me to take a break from the work but, more specifically, you. I'll be in my office going over the case details."

"That's not a break, sweetie. That's more work!"

Brennan waved dismissively over her shoulder as she headed determinedly away from one of the most uncomfortable conversations she could ever remember having. The sanctuary of her office had never been more desired.

What was wrong with David that both Booth and Angela had a problem with him? He was a nice guy who genuinely cared about her, who listened to her and laughed with her about music and work. Even in spite of all the gruesome things she spoke of with unflinching honesty and tactlessness, he found her as attractive as she found him. He wasn't a stubborn, arrogant, cocky, insufferable know-it-all like some guys she knew.

True, he tended to cling to her, a trait that bothered the independent Temperance Brennan at times, but she willed herself to look past it because, for once in her life, she wanted a normal relationship that didn't revolve around mass graves and blow flies. If giving up a small portion of her freedom meant that she could wind down at the end of the day in the warm arms of a man under a tangle of cool sheets, then she would give it up as earnestly as she could.

When she reached her office, Brennan decided it was better to leave those thoughts aside. There was still the matter of the woman in the riverbed, and she desperately wanted to solve it. She closed the door, snatched the case file on Jane Doe #3389-3G, and crashed onto the couch.

Within minutes of opening the folder, however, her eyelids grew heavy, and the last image that swam through Temperance Brennan's mind was a woman cradling a shattered ankle with a twisted arm.

-----

Booth jogged up the few steps to the lab where there were only three squints instead of four. His head pivoted from right to left, but there was no sign of their boss anywhere. "Where's Bones?"

Zack looked over at the special agent with curiosity. The man was smiling broadly and rubbing his hands together eagerly. "Good news?" Zack asked.

"The best. I've got a name for the lady and her kid."

"That is cause for celebration," said Hodgins, who was more than thrilled to realize he didn't have to comb through any more layers of silt and sediment for things that simply weren't there. He reached into a desk drawer and extracted a small, colorful bag. "Who wants gummy worms?"

Booth's eyes widened. "Every day is a fiesta with Hodgins at the reigns."

"Sounds like you've had a _sour_ worm," the micro analyst quipped as he sucked a green-and-yellow worm between his lips.

"So where's the ringleader of this circus?"

Angela thumbed toward Brennan's office, where the shades were drawn and only a dim light emanated through this slats. "I may have alluded—in a very roundabout way, of course—"

"Of course."

"—to the fact that she looked like crap, and she hurried to take a nap. I think she wanted to look good for you." She shrugged for effect.

"Thanks for the ego-boost, Ange," Booth said with a disbelieving smile, "but I think we both know that's about as likely as Bones agreeing psychology is an invaluable hard science."

"Not as unlikely as you might think," she muttered deviously to herself and walked over to Hodgins' side. "So are you going to wake her up? She'd want to know you've found out who the woman is."

"I think I'll let her sleep."

Every squint in the lab held his gaze silently, but Angela was the one who finally spoke. "That's noble of you and all, Booth, but I don't think she'll like that in the least when she does wake up and finds out we've solved the whole case without her."

"Eh, she'll thank me later."

"Doubt that," Hodgins whispered to Angela, and she laughed.

"You guys will help me in her stead though, right?"

Hodgins raised his hands helplessly in the air and wheeled his desk chair as far away from the agent as he could get. "I don't want any part of this. This situation has—name some natural disasters."

"Earthquake?"

"Landslide?"

"Wildfire?"

"Avalanche?"

"Hurricane?"

"Hurricane!" Hodgins said with a snap of his fingers. "This situation has 'hurricane' written all over it, and I want no part of Hurricane Temperance. I hear this time of year she's a Category Four."

Booth looked hopelessly at the other two squints and pleaded with his eyes, but Angela took one step back, then another, then another, until she was down the steps and darting into the hallway with that "Sorry, darling" look.

Which left Zack, lonely, eager-to-please Zack. Booth brought out the big guns—the charm smile—and Zack knew he was the proverbial deer in the headlights. With nowhere to run, he had no choice but to reluctantly consent to the suicide mission upon which the agent had embarked.

"I really think we should wait and consult with Dr. Brennan," he stuttered, but it was much too late to protest now. Booth knew he had the control, and there was no way for Zack to back out without fear of the agent's rather intimidating biceps, which flexed a subtle warning in what Zack perceived as Morse code; unfortunately, he was fluent and read the message clearly: "Leave at your own peril."

"Damned if you do, and damned if you don't," he thought miserably.

Booth walked up alongside his new partner and slapped him on the back; the blow was so strong that the grad student nearly tipped into the examination table. "Zack, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

Zack's only response was a soft whimper.

-----

Two hours later, midday unleashed a barrage of unadulterated sunshine that bombarded D.C., drying up puddles and toasting the sidewalk. Contrary to the previous day, there wasn't a cloud in the sky, and commuters were eager to leave their homes umbrella-free and return home for games of basketball and dinners on the grill. The heat that had crippled the city for month and a half gave way to seventy degree temperatures and a steady breeze, and citizens of D.C. breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Of course, no one inside the Jeffersonian working the Ruh case knew this. With the exception of the hour nap Booth had squeezed in, he had been running on empty along with poor Zack Addy and had yet to go outside and experience the birth of the new day. To the impromptu partners, it may as well have been two in the morning.

"Ready?" Booth said with a concerned glance at Zack.

"As I'll ever be." Zack clutched the railing of the lab area until his knuckles were white.

"It's like pulling off a Band-Aid," Booth consoled. "It'll be over quick, I promise."

"But I have sensitive skin," he whined. "It always hurts a lot longer than the promised three seconds."

Booth offered his worrisome assistant a firm squeeze of his shoulder, snatched a file from the edge of a stainless steel counter, and marched bravely toward No Man's Land—Brennan's closed office door.

At the knob, he took a moment to recall the script Zack and he had written while working. "This way was better, Bones. This way was better, Bones," he repeated under his breath. At last, he exhaled, gripped the knob and entered.

The office was serenely lit—the blinds were closed, the door was shut, and the desk lamp was on and directed toward the shelves. The computer hummed a gentle lullaby to its owner. Brennan was stretched out on her couch, one leg dangling over the side and one arm flopped over her forehead. A case file was tucked safely under her chin like a child's teddy bear at bedtime. Her left hand rested flat on her stomach, which delicately undulated with each soft breath, and Booth was transfixed by the motion.

She looked so peaceful that he was tempted to forget the notes in his hand for another hour and curl up beside her. He kneeled down next to her and leaned close enough to catch a whiff of the sterile smell of generic laundry detergent on her lab coat; it was oddly comforting. Booth knew he'd be in danger of falling asleep with the metronome-like sound of her breathing, and he considered how easy it would be to just squeeze in along side her. When he realized he'd been staring for well over a minute, he chalked his feelings up to exhaustion.

Reluctantly, he abandoned any thoughts of sleep and reached out to awaken her. His hand went automatically to her cheek, but luckily he caught himself, and he forced it toward her shoulder. It hovered above the thin skin of her lab coat, the waves of heat coming off her so hot, it roasted his palm.

"Go on and touch her," he told himself. "She won't break. You're being ridiculous." But still he couldn't convince himself to move. At last, he took a deep breath and lowered his hand.

She did not wake up, and now his hand was on her. He was free to leave it there as long as he liked, and he was surprised by how much he wanted to do just that. There, in that moment, with his hand on Brennan and no protests sneaking from her smooth lips, Booth realized how much he liked her. He was attracted to her, every inch of her, more than he had ever imagined, and he could no longer deny it. The shock of it was so great that he must have trembled, because Brennan's eyes opened and she immediately found him staring gently at her.

She frowned. "Booth?" she said confusedly. She looked around as though unsure of where she was, her eyes finally falling on the hand that still pressed firmly into her. She rolled her shoulder as a cue for him to let go, and he did, an embarrassed grin inching across his face. She sat up, now that she was free to do so, and folded the case file neatly on her lap. "What happened? Did you find out her name?"

Booth cleared his throat and stepped back to find a chair. "I did, and a lot more."

"How long have I been asleep?" she asked, glancing at her watch.

"A little over two hours."

There was a thick silence as reality sunk in. "What?" she demanded in the loudest voice Booth could ever remember hearing. "Why didn't you wake me?"

"There was no point," he said quickly. "The information Zack and I uncovered wouldn't have done any good yet anyway."

"Zack was in on this?" Now her voice was so low, he could barely hear her, but the tone was no less threatening.

Booth hurried to continue, "The mother's name is Clarimonde Ruh, her daughter is Hannelore. They moved to DC in August of 2000. The mother's boyfriend, Grant Fine, reported them missing two years later. That's why Missing Persons didn't find them; the search wasn't broad enough. I assumed they'd been kidnapped and killed shortly after, but they were gone for over a year, Bones. Whoever took them tortured them over a long period of time."

He presented two photographs from the missing persons report. On the left was Clarimonde: a plain face of smooth skin surrounded by a halo of excess padding, large gray eyes turned down with an unspoken sorrow, and wavy flaxen hair that bobbed against her shoulders. On the right was Hannelore: huge eyes like her mother's, but darker, almost black, the same blonde hair as Clarimonde, and exquisite bone structure just the way Angela had drawn her.

With a pang in her chest, Brennan accepted the photographs into her own hands. She scrutinized the faces, committing every detail to memory so that when she shoved the photos in the killer's face, he would never be able to wipe away their images just as she would never be able. It took a conscious effort on her part to steady her breathing long enough for her to get her question out:

"Why haven't you pulled the boyfriend in for questioning already? If you had woken me up, we could have done that hours ago."

"This way was better, Bones," he said in his perfectly rehearsed, cool voice, "because now we can survey Grant Fine's neighborhood while he's at work, get the skinny from his neighbors about him, poke around outside and get a feel for what the guy is like."

Brennan took a few deep breaths in an effort to calm down. No one could make her angrier than Seeley Booth, and she knew that, but despite her anger, she said, "Tell me what you know so far."

Booth looked down at the notes Zack had compiled, and he read through the stats: "Grant Fine, 43. According to the DMV, he lives in historic Anacostia," he paused to poignantly stare at Brennan, "and employment records show he's worked at the Maine Avenue Fish Wharf for six years."

"Not exactly a surgeon," Brennan mumbled, wiping the sleep from her eyes.

"The guy guts fish all day, Bones, he would certainly know how to use a kitchen knife." Brennan shrugged. She was not ready to jump to conclusions yet, but Booth was right. A man with that much experience armed with a knife would know how to carefully inflict damage to soft tissue.

They sat there for several minutes saying nothing. Brennan was infuriated that Booth hadn't woken her up, and she figured it was only fair to make him wait in return. Finally, he raised his eyebrows, smiled awkwardly at her, and said, "Well, are we going to go a-snooping or…"

"Why don't you ask your new partner?" she replied evenly.

"Come on, Bones, don't be like this."

"Be like what? I think it's a very logical question. You would take your partner, and seeing how you and Zack work so well together—"

"You're my partner, Bones, okay? You are, and no one else." His gaze was unwavering, and Brennan was almost to the point of forgiving him when he added, "By the way, you look really cute when you're sleeping."

-----

The door to Brennan's office exploded open and she flew out, arms ratcheted at her side, all the furnaces of Hell aglow in her eyes. Every head in the main room turned toward the commotion, and it seemed as though the fluorescents overhead were angled directly on her, like prison search lights looking for a dangerous inmate. Behind her trailed Booth, who was waving his arms desperately as a warning signal, as if the other two squints couldn't figure it out for themselves.

"Thar she blows," Hodgins said in a bemused tone and quickly swiveled away from the eye of the hurricane.

Brennan ignored Hodgins entirely as she charged straight to Zack and towered before him. "Zack, I demand to know why you have been working with Booth behind my back."

His eyebrows bunched together with worry and he positioned his clipboard between them in case it came to blows. "Well, I didn't really have a choice—"

"You could have chosen to wake me up," she snapped. Zack had nothing to say; he was totally intimated by the awesome power that was Temperance Brennan.

"Aw, let the guy off the hook," said Hodgins. "He was coerced."

Brennan turned her stern eyes on the scientist and placed her hands firmly on her hips. "And how about you, Jack? Did Booth coerce you too?"

"Well, I," he stuttered. Hodgins had a choice to make: save his friend or save himself, but he took one look at the pitiful state Zack was in and knew what he had to do. "Yes, I helped too."

She looked between all three men and released an exasperated gasp. Standing there in the midst of the triangle, she finally felt defeat. As she traded looks with each man, her eyes fell on the emptied bag of gummy worms on top of Hodgins' workspace. "Gummy worms?"

Hodgins looked sheepish. "We had a mini celebration when Booth found out their names."

"And you had gummy worms without me?" She actually sounded wounded, so Booth cozied up next to her and put an arm around her.

"Come on," he said, steering her toward the exit, "I'll buy you a bag on the way to Anacostia."

"That was a prime example of mutiny," she grumbled as she headed down the stairs. "You know, in many societies, like the Baluba in Africa or the Aztecs, the village elder is the first person consulted during times of conflict and turmoil because he or she is considered divine—"

"Are you fishing for compliments, Bones? Yes, I think you're divine," he said with a pat on her back. Brennan did her best to ignore him and continued to rant on about the sacred rights of the person in charge, but Booth turned away from her and said, "Go home, guys."

The anthropologist stopped dead in her tracks to gape at his boldness. She regained all of her accrued anger, which was enough to punch him roughly in the arm. "Hey, they're my team, and they'll go home when I tell them to."

She turned back to the boys and said, "You're staying."

"Yes, Dr. Brennan," Zack added weakly.

However, as soon as her back was turned and she was most of the way to the hallway, the FBI agent turned around, smiled and gave them the "get out now" motion with his thumb.

Booth and Brennan passed Angela on the way out, who smiled warmly at the pair and waved goodbye. She greeted the lab boys with a grin, but they hardly noticed her as they were both slouching so low it looked like they were missing their spines. "Geez," she began, "Brennan looked upset. What I miss?"

"Oh, nothing," Hodgins said casually. "Say, did you see the Grim Reaper, too, when you walked in? He seemed a little sad he had to leave empty-handed. And he was so close."

"I think I need to sit down," Zack squeaked.

Hodgins and Angela both chuckled. Hodgins looked between his two colleagues and said, "Either of you want to get a bite to eat?"

"I think I'm just going to stay here and work," the grad student grumbled.

"Don't be ridiculous, Zack. You've been working nonstop since yesterday morning. You need a break."

"Well, the other alternative is to go home, stare at the ceiling and wait for a slow and painful death." Zack improvised a scale with his two hands and pretended to weigh the alternatives.

Angela smiled at his over-exaggeration but urged him on with her bright eyes. "Go home, Zack." He muttered some form of agreement and hefted himself up from the railing of which he felt he'd become a part.

"You hungry?" Hodgins asked, glancing hopefully at his lovely neighbor.

"Are you kidding? I'm ready to gnaw on these bones too. Let's go." Hodgins offered Angela his arm, and she looped hers through it.

-----

The ride over to Anacostia was made much cheerier by the fact that the sun was shining and it was no longer ninety degrees but a balmy seventy-four. They had driven with the windows down, which gave Brennan something to think about other than the fact that her partner had betrayed her.

Truthfully, Brennan knew that Booth hadn't set out to hurt her—all he wanted was to let her relax for a bit; he was just trying to be sensitive—but that didn't stop her from wanting to be irritated. These women meant a lot to her, more than most of the victims that showed up on her examination table, and she had wanted to be there when they were finally identified. As professional as she tried to be, this case was different. She wanted the assailant more than ever because she wanted the horrific movies that had been playing in her head to leave.

Booth pulled the car over to the side of the road and stopped. "We're here," he said.

Brennan looked out her window. They were on Good Hope Road in the historic neighborhood of Anacostia. Founded in 1854, Anacostia had once been a prestigious and wealthy section of town, but after years of neglect, it had become one of the most notorious neighborhoods in the city, with an extremely high homicide statistic—more than half of the city's total.

She fought against the slideshow that scrolled through her mind, but it would not be suppressed. Images of Clarimonde and Hannelore walking home from the grocery, sitting on their front stoop, locking their doors at night, playing music over what they hoped was only a car backfiring.

In an effort to avoid being swallowed whole by the sadness, Brennan forced conversation. "This isn't the safest part of the city, Booth. It could have been anyone here."

"Let's start with the most obvious choice and work our way out," he said.

His eyes scanned the line of rowhouses along the street and settled on a beige-colored two-story with a small, barren front porch. "There," he said, "number 342.

"Damnit, is that a For Sale sign?" Booth leaned forward across his dash and squinted. Indeed it was for sale. The white and blue sign creaked in the breeze, a slow and steady whine as obnoxious as a child's playground taunt.

Brennan shared a worried look with her partner. They were both thinking the guy had somehow caught wind of what had happened and high-tailed it out of town. The only way to know for sure was to question the neighbors.

Booth grabbed his suit jacket and badge out of the backseat and got out of the car. Brennan joined him, and they made their way to the house to the right of Fine's. They glanced in the front window, through a set of lacey curtains, and saw an old African American woman nestled in front of the TV.

After adjusting his jacket on his shoulders, Booth looked to his partner and said, "Let me do the talking, okay? I don't want you to frighten the lady."

Brennan gasped. "I don't frighten people, I merely offer them the unadulterated, abject truth that they choose to interpret as they see fit." He licked his lower lip and stared incredulously at her. "What? Fine, you talk." She shoved her hands in her pockets and stepped away from the door. Booth consulted his notes for the neighbor's name and then knocked.

They heard the leisurely shuffle of slippers making their way across bare wood floors, and in a moment there was a withered face peeping through the window in the front door. There was a jangle and a click as the woman unlocked the door and cracked it open. "Yes?" she said in a voice as brittle as an autumn leaf.

Booth produced his badge. "Special Agent Seeley Booth of the FBI and Dr. Temperance Brennan of the Jeffersonian. If you don't mind, ma'am, we'd like a moment of your time to ask you a few questions about your former neighbor, Mr. Grant Fine."

She hesitated a moment as she sized up the pair of them, but eventually she opened her front door and filled the frame with her hunched form. Her eyes were sunken pits in the middle of her face, which looked like an apple left to dry in the sun. Her gray hair was screwed up neatly against her head, and her nightgown was buttoned all the way to her throat. She placed one shriveled hand against the door jamb and leaned her frail body against it. "I'd invite you folks in, but I'm afraid it's a mess inside. You don't mind, do you?"

"Not at all," Booth continued. "We just want a quick moment."

"Now what's all this about Grant?"

Booth caught a glimpse into her foyer and saw a pile of mail sitting on a table along with a prescription bottle and tacky plastic statue of a smiling cherub. "How long have you lived here, Mrs. Abbott?"

"Oh, let me see," she drawled, her eyes rolling back in her head as if searching for her memory. "Going on 26 years in October, I believe."

Booth jotted this down in a notebook he kept inside his jacket, and then he resumed eye contact. "And how well do you know Mr. Fine?"

"Grant's been my neighbor seven years now. Nice fellow. Works hard and doesn't bother a soul. Sometimes he even offers to help me clean up this place. It's hard being so old and maintaining a house, you know." Booth nodded sympathetically and held out for more information. "Had some hard times in his life, Grant did. His girlfriend and her daughter disappeared quite a few years back. Such a tragedy. You know, they never found them."

Booth interrupted her with the drawing Angela had done of the mother (Angela had suggested it would be a better choice than the photos as the image might shock some people into giving information). "Do you recognize this body? I know it's unusual to see a body without a face, but—"

"That's her, that's Clarimonde Ruh," Mrs. Abbott said without hesitation. She stabbed a gnarled, arthritic finger at the drawing. "Such a sad girl. She used to lean just like that on Grant's front stoop and wait for him to come home. About the only time I ever saw her smile was when she was with him. Clarimonde, she was, well, she was sick. Pretty hefty around the middle, too, but with lovely face and such a pleasant voice. Grant always said she had a voice like Sunday church bells."

Booth then presented the drawing of the face. "That would be Hannelore, Clarimonde's daughter. Wasn't Grant's, but she may as well have been, they got along so well."

Booth glanced at Brennan, and she knew what he was thinking, that Grant and Hannelore had begun an affair and it had gotten out of hand. But Brennan wasn't so sure she believed that. The way Mrs. Abbott had just spoken of Clarimonde and Grant's love, well, she couldn't believe she was admitting it to herself, but she was already ruling him out as a suspect. She hated the thought of that purely subjective line of reasoning, but it just didn't sit right with her.

"What happened to them?" Mrs. Abbott inquired, her eyes glowing with concern and interest.

"That's what we're trying to find out, ma'am. We'd appreciate any information you're able to give us."

Mrs. Abbott seemed to debate this for a moment, but then she continued, "Grant lost his job at the fish market a week ago." At this, Booth looked positively floored. That was twice already that his information had been wrong. The guy had gone from homeowner with a steady job to temporarily homeless and unemployed. This was the last time he let a squint do the grunt work. Meanwhile Mrs. Abbott continued, "I think the memories started to catch up to him with all that extra time he had to spend in the house. Finally decided to sell it the other day. I'm going to miss him. Such a considerate neighbor. Always brought me flowers on my birthday. Don't get a lot types like him 'round these parts."

"Did you ever hear any strange noises coming from his house? Any fights or things breaking?"

"No, never. Quiet as a crypt over there." Brennan frowned at the analogy and made a move to argue, but Booth discreetly grabbed her wrist, and she stepped back.

She decided to make better use of her time by surveying the surrounding scene. There wasn't much to look at; Fine's front yard was a stripe of brown weeds that was riddled with litter and cigarette butts. The windows were barren and unadorned, the front porch was in need of a good sweeping but otherwise clean, and the mailbox appeared empty. There were no newspapers, children's toys, sports teams' insignia or anything that suggested human existence. The house was an empty husk.

Back on Mrs. Abbott's front porch, however, it was anything but quiet. Apparently when you got the woman talking on a subject she knew something about, she shared every detail she knew. "I think the only time I ever heard a ruckus over there was when Hannelore started back at school. She was such a pretty young thing, my word, and the boys were always knocking on Grant's door, asking her out, belting out ballads from the street, I kid you not, but Grant was very protective of her." Booth glanced at Brennan again, but this time Mrs. Abbott noticed.

She waved a finger strictly at the two of them. "Now, I saw that, Agent Booth, and their relationship wasn't anything like that. Grant was going to marry Clarimonde. He loved her singularly, and he was nothing but a good father to Hannelore, for all the trouble she got herself into."

Booth's ears prickled. "Trouble?"

Mrs. Abbott finally looked uncomfortable and ready to stop talking. "I'm sorry, dears, but it seems the kettle's whistling. If you don't mind, it's time for my morning tea and vitamins."

"Mrs. Abbott, please," Brennan pleaded. Both her partner and the old woman seemed surprised by her sudden outburst. Mrs. Abbott blinked and focused intently on her. "We just want to bring justice to them."

"I don't like speaking ill of the dead," she uttered firmly and closed the door abruptly in their faces. They watched her shadow amble back toward her kitchen before resigning themselves to the fact that they had just hit another dead end. The pair stared at the door now tightly shut and locked in their faces, and Booth offered up the first sigh of resignation. He looked at his partner, who was already scanning the scene for new prospects—no one could say the lady wasn't determined.

"Well," she said, "should we try the house on the left?"

They walked down the porch steps and over to the next house. It was utterly dark inside, so Booth pressed his hands and face against a downstairs window to peer in. "Nothing in there except dust and dirt," he reported. "Looks like the place is abandoned."

But Brennan wouldn't take no for an answer. She pounded on the front door with her fist and yelled, "FBI, open up!"

Booth interceded, grabbing her hand and turning her toward him. His face came within inches of hers when he said in a stern voice, "Bones, that's my job, okay? You don't see me going around, banging on doors, yelling, 'Forensic anthropologist, show me your bones!'"

"I don't say that," she snapped defensively.

Booth laughed. "No, you don't, but you would if you had the chance."

Brennan opened her mouth to argue, but suddenly she realized he was right. "So what do we do now?"

The agent pondered for a moment. One neighbor gave them a good start but left them wanting more, and the other neighbor apparently didn't exist any more. His eyes settled on Fine's old house, the "For Sale" sign swinging out front. He smiled at Brennan and said, "Remember when I said we needed to get creative?"

"Yes, and I remember I didn't like the idea much because you said that it means I don't get a gun."

"That's still true, but the part about lying out our asses is fair game."

Brennan raised an eyebrow. "What exactly are you suggesting?"

He pulled out his cell phone, dialed the number of the realtor, and waited until she picked up. "Hello? Yes, my name is David Boring. My wife and I are interested in the 342 Good Hope Road property. We're out in Anacostia today, and I was wondering if you had time to swing by and show us the house? You do? Great. We'll see you there in an hour." He closed his phone, tipped it back into his pocket and smiled bemusedly at his partner, who stood completely aghast.


	5. Five Minutes

_Author's Note: Apologies for the time it took to get this chapter up. I got distracted this week with a party and the season finale of "Crossing Jordan," but I'm pleased to say I'm back on track and making excellent progress._

_Also, Mickey Ryan wondered if there would be Brennan danger and if David would be exposed in some way. Let me just say the ending surprises even me, but you'll have to stick around and see—I don't want to reveal anything. But trust me, nothing will ever be the same again. (Wonders if attempts at deviousness are paying off…) However, that's a ways away! We've still got a killer to catch!_

_One more quick thing – I don't know how familiar my readers are with forensics, but GCMS is short for Gas Chromatograph/Mass Spectrometer. It's used to identify the unique chemical signature of trace by burning a small sample and comparing the results to a large national database. Luminol and Phenolphthalein are both blood detectors. Just thought you might want to know. :-P_

**Five**

Brennan crossed her arms and glowered at her partner. A summer wind whistled through the dusty cobwebs on the front porch, and Booth could have sworn he heard the showdown music from the old-time cowboy movies. "I'm not an actress, Booth," she said definitively.

"That's fine because you're role is simple enough: you get to be yourself."

"You're forgetting the key fact that we're not married, and your name isn't David. And, incidentally," she began in an acerbic tone, "David's last name is Simmons. I don't appreciate the adolescent change you made to it."

Booth took two steps closer to her, until he was only a finger's distance away. He grabbed her hand and snaked his arm around her waist until they were locked into an impromptu dance. Brennan, unwilling to let herself be flustered by the intimate connection, maintained eye contact because his intense gaze made it impossible to look away. "C'mon, Bones," he said in a bare whisper, "we can pull this off. Just do what you do with David with me."

She cocked her head to the side and frowned confusedly. "That would be inappropriate; I'm not dating you."

"No," he said as he spun her briefly, "you're married to me. Consider this our first dance as a married couple. Now, come on, plant one on my cheek."

"If you keep talking to me this way, I'll be planting my fist in it."

He laughed but did not relinquish his hold on her. Instead, he pulled her tighter until his lips brushed her ear. She opened her mouth to protest, yet she found she had no words. But Booth had quite a few: "Come off it, Bones. There's got to be at least one sentimental phalange or vertebrae or whatever in your body. Can't you at least try to act like you don't hate me for ten minutes?"

His eyes implored her to give him a shot, and she responded by tightening her grip on his hand. "I don't hate you, Booth," she said slowly and seriously.

"Good. Then can we do this?"

She hesitated, but she knew that Clarimonde and Hannelore were counting on her. She stopped their dance and took a few cautionary steps away from him (his skin did feel awfully nice against hers). "We can do this."

"All right, let's just go over our cover quickly here. Obviously, you'll call me David, and I'll call you Temperance to make it easy on you—Mr. and Mrs. Boring."

"I really dislike the choice of last name, Booth."

"Okay, you may as well start calling me David now, Temperance, so you get some practice in. And besides, the last name fits the guy. What you do on your dates anyway, think of new ways to classify bones and mergers?"

"David's got a wild side!" she protested. "Hello? Leather jacket."

Booth thought he'd explode from the laughter that clawed at his insides, but Brennan looked anything but jovial. Her hands were cemented firmly to her hips and her eyes were narrowed like gun sights on him. "A leather jacket is not the automatic indicator of a fun person, Temperance."

"In American contemporary culture, the leather jacket is typically recognized in movies and TV as a status symbol of a rebel, and—"

Booth lifted a hand and waved a desperate signal for her to stop. "Let's just dispense with the anthro-babble and say I see your point, which I don't, and move on." She opened her mouth to speak again, but Booth raised his hand again and said, "Uh-uh." She looked irritated, but she kept her mouth closed.

They stepped off of the neighboring porch and waited on Fine's in case the realtor showed up soon. Booth leaned against the railing and watched Brennan as she peered through the front windows of the house. He smiled at her hunkered over form, her hands tucked in her jean pockets, her head pivoting strategically like an owl's. She was charming in her own way that Seeley Booth believed only he could appreciate.

"I didn't think you'd ever seen a movie," he teased.

Without looking back at him, she said, "I've seen a few. I'm not completely closed off from the world."

Again Booth smiled. Charming indeed. His eyes lingered on the graceful curve of her spine before he forced them away. "So back to this marriage thing. We're newlyweds shopping for our first home. We met online, of course, and it was love at first sight."

She leaned against the window sill and crossed her arms. "I know I've said this before, but you're very sentimental, Booth."

"It's David, and I'm not sentimental, I'm romantic. I believe in love, which you obviously don't. Why is that, Temperance? Why would you even want to see David if you know you could never love him because you believe there is no such thing?"

Suddenly, he was standing in front of her. He wasn't sure what had propelled him before her, but he knew this was where he needed to be. For Brennan, she found herself giving in to the pleasure of his touch as his hand pressed against her cheek. She closed her eyes and trusted herself to him. She felt him step in another inch, her breathing becoming labored and her carefully constructed control slipping away.

Booth, too, felt the change. His initial intentions had been to break down her walls and understand who she was, but now she was under his hand, now she was his despite herself, and he was utterly startled. What he had planned to do and what he now wanted to do were two completely different things. Here was a beautiful woman locked into a tender moment with him that would never happen again if she had her way, and her lips were so close. Her eyelids fluttered, and he felt the moment slipping away. What should he do, here on this porch of a suspect's home?

The floor was hard underneath Brennan's feet, and the balls of her feet were aching from the tension she put on them as she waited for something to happen. It reminded her that they were in the middle of a case, a case that meant the world to her, and yet she was willing to let a few minutes slip by. She didn't care if they found Grant Fine, she didn't care that the neighbors might be watching. If he kissed her now, she knew she would kiss him back, even if she did not believe in the abstract idea of love. She would do it because it was what her body wanted and because he smelled nice, like the outdoors, both intense and comforting at the same time.

But he did not kiss her. Instead, Booth remembered the importance of the case, the fact that Brennan was with a guy who was obviously nuts about her, and the way she had kissed that guy when he greeted her last night. This moment was a fluke, brought on by a situation that required them to act as more than partners. So he willed the attraction away and whispered, "Is it because of your parents?"

Brennan's eyes snapped open and she stumbled back. The unprecedented desire that had blossomed within her turned instantly to scorn. She wanted to slap him, but she chose instead not to look at him.

Booth, on the other hand, was mentally kicking himself for saying what he had. He couldn't imagine a dumber thing to have said. She scuffed the ball of foot across the porch, and Booth was reminded of a nervous child, which, in some ways, he thought she was. "Now is not the time to play hard-nosed investigator with me, _David_," she growled.

"I'm sorry. I'm just so used to you asking me such forward questions that I thought turnabout was fair play."

She said nothing, and for awhile, Booth was contented with saying nothing as well. They passed fifteen minutes in silence, listening as cars rolled by and wind chimes jangled. Brennan tried to think of anything other than her parents, but it was impossible now that Booth had brought them up.

The twinkling Christmas tree lights. The mounds of presents. Her brother Russ waiting patiently in the corner for her to begin digging in, and yet she couldn't. For all the wealth of gifts that were there, the room felt empty. She stared at each package and imagined a gruesome jack-in-the-box ready to explode in her face, body parts of her parents stuck on the ends of the metal coils—a finger here, an ear there, a shattered ankle in this one.

And with perfect ease she was lost in the memories of Clarimonde and Hannelore Ruh. What had their families thought when they missed Christmas? What did Grant Fine think? Was he really a heinous man who had killed his beloved girlfriend and her daughter and then reported them missing? Brennan realized for the first time that what she wanted to think and what actually might be were not one in the same. Against her better judgment, she found that she wanted to believe Grant's story before she had even met him; she wanted to identify with him, understand him, give him the closure she may never have.

She glanced back at Booth, who was watching the road for the realtor. He was probably right about her, she decided. She couldn't believe in love when its truest form had been ripped from her at the age of fifteen. She was angered by the fact that he could ever expect her to get over such a huge loss, but at the same time, she knew he meant it not as disrespect but as concern.

Booth cared about her, and she cared about him. It was a strong bond that was required between partners, and Brennan could feel in her cherished bones that they had the strongest kind of that bond. As different as they were, as obnoxious as he could be, they were two sides of the same coin, not to mention they made one hell of a team. They would solve the Ruh case and go on to solve many others, and they would always be that same incredible, unshakable team. She would go back out with David, and they would both forget the moment in time when partners may have become lovers.

A black sedan turned down the end of Good Hope Road and made for the house. Booth straightened up and turned to face Brennan. "Remember, I am David now. Try not to forget that, Gomer Pyle."

"I don't know what that means."

"Just act like you love me," he hissed into her ear as his arm encircled her waist. He smiled and waved to the realtor, a trim African American woman in a navy pant suit. Brennan regained her bearings enough to wave as well.

The realtor opened the trunk of her car, pulled out a briefcase, and approached them with a warm smile. Her face was narrow and gaunt, but her eyes were bright and friendly, and she wasted no time extending her hand to Booth. "Mr. and Mrs. Boring, such a pleasure to meet you. My name is Chanice Moore from the Equity Realty Company. I'm so excited to be showing this place. It's one of my favorites on my roster, you know."

"Please, call me David, and this is my wife Temperance."

Chanice shook Brennan's hand as well and proceeded to unlock the front door. "Well, come on in," she said as she ushered them through the entryway.

Inside, the living room was cold and hollow. The room had obviously been well-maintained because the paint on the walls was smooth and even without odd marks or stains. To Brennan, this suggested that Fine had cared about his house, that the walls held cherished memories, but the darker side of this detail was more apparent to Booth, who was already suspicious of the man's departure. Perhaps two violent and bloody deaths had occurred within this very room, and Fine had wanted to cover them up with a fresh coat of cheerful blue.

There was no furniture inside, no trappings of a life once lived there. Brennan used her skilled eyes to search for signs of a struggle, any indicators that the Ruhs had fought with Fine, but she saw nothing on the bare floors other than dust and the average scuff mark.

"To the right is the living room. You'll notice it's quaint, typical of a historic house such as this, but I assure you that fireplace works terrifically, and it's perfect for those winter nights when you just want to snuggle with your loved on." She winked at the two of them, and Booth took that cue to grab Brennan and wrap her in his arms. He kissed her securely on the cheek, and despite the flurry of motion, she managed an awkward smile. When he released her, she tried not to think of the brand on her skin that he had left there.

Instead she said methodically, "We're newlyweds."

Chanice smiled. "I gathered. You know, I see a lot of couples in my line of work, and I know we've just met and all, but you two make a really great pair. You've obviously got chemistry." Booth smiled proudly at Brennan, and she couldn't decide whether to interpret it as how much he was impressed with her acting or something else entirely. "This house would be just the right size for a new family starting out."

She motioned them through the downstairs kitchen and dining room. Each room was about as big as the last and just as empty. While Booth kept the realtor engaged, Brennan examined the rooms from floor to ceiling. She dragged her knuckles along the wall, softly tapping to detect hollows or secret rooms where Fine might have stashed a body.

She hadn't found anything unusual yet, a fact which both disheartened and thrilled her. On one hand, it substantiated her belief that Fine was not involved with his loved ones' disappearances, but on the other hand, it meant they were no closer to finding out who was.

At the base of the stairwell to the upper level, Chanice stopped them. "I hope this doesn't offend you," she began, glancing between the partners, "but you don't seem like the type of people who would be interested in a house in this neighborhood."

Booth calmed the realtor's fears with a wide grin. "My wife's an anthropologist. She's doing research for an upcoming symposium on how cultures in neighborhoods—oh, honey, I can't explain it. You'd better do it." He leaned toward the realtor and whispered, "She's so much smarter than I am."

Brennan looked startled as the two waited expectantly for her explanation; Booth, in particular, was discreetly giving her the "come on!" signal with his hand. She was a terrible liar and an even worse storyteller. She racked her brain to think of a subject that would be plausible for research and that gelled with what Booth had just set up.

Hesitantly, she stammered something out: "My research is on how ethnic communities in impoverished neighborhoods accept or reject the presence of outsiders as confidants and acquaintances." She glanced at Booth for approval, and since he didn't understand it, he knew the realtor wouldn't either, so he gave her the thumbs up.

"That's quite a mouthful," Chanice said with a slow nod. Brennan looked embarrassed and returned to caressing and tapping on the walls bit by bit.

Booth leaned close to her ear as they trudged up the steps. Chanice was chatting idly about the facets of the house, and Booth thought now was the best time to glean information from his partner. Under the guise of wanting to give her a kiss, he brought his lips to her ear. "Bones, what are you doing? You look like a lunatic."

As his lips worked slowly up and down with his speech, Brennan closed her eyes. The warm tickle of his breath on her skin made the corner of her mouth twitch. She chastised herself for this reaction—he wasn't flirting; they were undercover, and besides, he'd just called her a lunatic—but she understood the body's natural reaction to arousal, and as much as her brilliant mind wanted to deny it, intimate contact like this aroused her.

In as steady a voice as she could manage, she said, "I'm prodding for secrets. Give me a break, I don't have X-ray vision, _David_."

Booth, too, realized his proximity to his partner, but he was allowing himself to indulge in the moment. Whereas Brennan was guarded and repressed, he felt every wave of attraction to the anthropologist, and he was no longer denying it. He liked her, he wanted to date her, to kiss her, but she wasn't available, socially or emotionally. If he thought about it though, he had to confess that half the reason he chose this guise of the married couple was to convince himself and hopefully Brennan that they could have a shot at some sort of relationship. Regretfully, however, he didn't see the spark of interest in her eyes. She was with this David idiot and for now, he'd have to deal with it. Still, that didn't mean he couldn't do a little wooing of his own.

He grabbed her hand in his and nodded subtly toward Chanice. Brennan held it stiffly, a fact that made Booth wince inside. She was right—she wasn't much of an actor, and it was painful to know that she would rather fondle the wall than touch him. Booth, however, shoved his ego to the side and outwardly remained the happy husband.

Chanice showed them to the master bedroom. It was probably the biggest room in the house, with another wide fireplace right above the family room's. The walls were painted a somber gray, and the room had more the feel of a morgue than a bedroom. Brennan should have felt at home, but the walls had the opposite effect. She was saddened by the cold emptiness, and she felt every tragedy these walls had seen. She looked over at Booth, who was eyeing the area in much the same way.

Chanice, sensing her fish were getting away, picked up on the distant vibe and quickly intervened. "Now, I should tell you, it's very easy to change the paint in these rooms. The man who lived here before, well, let's just say he was eager to get away."

Brennan tried to look concerned, but she had the distinct feeling her expression turned out to look more like she was drunk. "Is there something wrong with the house?" Booth squeezed her hand in a silent appraisal of her smart question. Despite herself, she felt her cheeks burning.

"No, no, nothing like that. The previous owner, well, he had some hard times. Lost his family a few years back, something like that, and decided it was finally time to move on. I assure you, he took excellent care of the place. The walls are spotless."

"I've noticed," Booth added somewhat bitterly.

"His family, they didn't die in here, did they?" Brennan continued. She was on a roll, and she felt her "husband" squeeze her hand again, twice this time. She wondered if that meant she had gone too far or if she was on the right track, but she wanted to find out as much as she could before the opportunity was over.

"Actually, they went missing, but I don't want this to dissuade you from thinking about this house. The historic district here in Anacostia is a National Landmark, and people who live here really value their homes. You're not going to find crack houses next door or beggars on the corners in this part of town. What happened to the family that lived here before was a fluke incident. If anything, it's helped strengthen the neighborhood, and there is now a top notch security system, if I didn't show you that when we came in."

"Oh, so when it happened, there was no security? Was it a break in? Someone from the community?"

Chanice was starting to look uncomfortable, especially since Brennan was looking more and more intensely at her. Booth worried she'd blow their cover, and he interceded. "Tempe, honey, save the research for the library. We're not here to badger this poor woman for details for your paper. You'll have more than enough time to do that if we move in." She looked furiously at him, but he kissed her cheek again, and she was forced to relent, not because she remembered she was acting, but because in that moment she knew she wasn't—his kiss had startled her silent and she couldn't remember what she had been saying a minute ago.

"Sorry," she grumbled. "I love my work."

Booth actually laughed. "You have no idea."

This put Chanice back at ease, and she moved them through the other rooms in the house: two upstairs bathrooms, a small office, and finally the second bedroom.

It was considerably smaller than the master bedroom, and the walls were brighter—bright green, in fact. Brennan could still feel Hannelore's presence in this room. She imagined a vivacious girl, bright and funny; yet underneath all that energy was a tired, lonely soul who found trouble more often than she found happiness. These were the images that entered her mind, images she wouldn't tell Booth or anyone else because they bordered on psychology, her nemesis.

When she finally came out of her reverie, she realized she had missed most of what Chanice had said, and only caught the end: "It's perfect for a child's bedroom."

"Oh, we're not having children—" Brennan began automatically until Booth silenced her with a sharp pinch to her lower back.

"Not until we're settled in, have some time for just us," he finished with a devilish look at his partner.

Chanice smiled. "Smart choice. Best not to rush into things. Well, this could be a great guest bedroom in the mean time, or anything you want it to be. The possibilities with this house are endless.

"So what do you think?" she continued eagerly. Booth could see the predatory glare in her eyes, the same look he got when he closed in on a suspect. She wanted this deal so badly she practically had the papers signed for them.

Booth looked at Brennan hopefully, and the realtor's grin widened. He said, "It's in our price range."

"I don't know, David. I'm not sure this is quite what we're looking for."

Brennan turned her determined gaze to Chanice. "Is there a backyard?"

Reluctantly, the realtor led them back downstairs and out through the kitchen. On their way down, Booth whispered, "What are you doing?"

"Exploring all the options before coming to a single conclusion," she responded simply.

They walked through a simple back door, and Brennan took note of the keypad for the security system, just as the realtor had said. The backyard wasn't much at all. Like many city properties, it was the size of a postage stamp. There were five-foot high privacy fences surrounding the lot, and the grass between them was unkempt. Weeds had sprouted up all over and made it very hard for Brennan to search for disturbed earth. She walked the yard casually, but really she was checking for pits where a grave might be hidden. She found none.

Defeated, she rejoined Booth and Chanice, who were discussing drainage issues. Something to the left of the back door caught Brennan's eye, and she interrupted their conversation. "What's that?" she asked, pointing to two red, diagonal, weatherworn doors.

"Oh, that's just the storm door to the basement, but there's not much to see down there. It's unfinished, and besides, the kitchen pantry is outfitted for a washer and dryer."

Brennan strode over to the door, and using her sleeve in case she disturbed any latent prints, she tugged on the handle. The doors barely budged. "Locked," she told Booth, who tried to hide his chagrin.

"You really care about the basement?" Chanice said in complete deadpan.

Brennan finally recognized her faux pas and rubbed her wrist idly. "It's just, I just, I was hoping David and I might be able to build some kind of a recreational room," she fumbled. Upon seeing Booth's thumbs up, she added dryly, "For all those children we'll be having."

"Oh, I'm sorry. Why didn't you say so? I'd be happy to show you, of course."

Unfortunately, the storm doors were bolted firmly shut, so they had to go in through the kitchen to the concealed door under the upstairs. The stairs into the basement were narrow and rickety and incredibly steep. They were made of unfinished wood, and they had to watch their steps carefully so that they didn't break through the rotting oak.

It smelled musty down there, too, like it desperately needed some fresh air. There were two slivers of window that looked out toward the street, but there was no way anyone but a small child could fit through them. The walls were bare stone and the floor was dirt with a simple drain in the middle. Brennan stooped over it as nonchalantly as possible, checking for particles of bone, blood or hair, but nothing was visible. In that moment, she would kill for some Phenolphthalein.

It was a normal unfinished basement. Again, she could find no traces of a struggle, no holes in the exposed beams or stone that indicated shackles or chains had ever been present, no pits or swells from decomposing corpses. At last, she had to admit defeat. If Fine was the killer, he was an excellent maid because the house was spotless.

Booth and Brennan thanked Chanice for her time and told her they'd be in touch very soon (they still had two other houses to see, but they were very interested). The realtor left them at their car satisfied and hopeful of an eventual sale, and the partners left her unsure and disappointed.

They climbed into the Chevy and pretended like they were talking excitedly about the house, which, in a way, they were. "What'd you think?" Booth asked.

"Inconclusive," she said. "No visible signs that two murders were committed there, but I find that unlikely to begin with."

"Why's that?"

"Think of the evidence," she reminded him. "Clarimonde's bones were gnawed on by rats as she bled out. There would have to be a lot of blood in that house and evidence of a large rodent infestation for it to be the plausible place of death. Maybe they were abducted from the house, but they couldn't have died there. Besides, it's a rowhouse, meaning the neighbors would have surely heard the women screaming at some point during their long torture."

"Still, I got a bad feeling about that place."

"Feelings are abstract ideas, Booth. We need evidence to build a case." She said this, but she remembered her reaction to both Grant's room and Hannelore's. She wondered if this recognition showed on her fact.

Booth grumbled as loud as his engine when he fired it up and began to steer it back toward FBI headquarters, where he planned to get a hold of Grant Fine's current residence and pay him a visit.

Halfway there, however, Brennan's phone rang. It was Zack. "Dr. Brennan, I was reexamining the skeleton here while I was waiting for you to return, and I found something odd."

"Excellent initiative, Zack. What did you find?" She shot Booth an optimistic grin as she waited for her answer.

"I've isolated a few gray chips from some of the vertebrae and also one of the scapulas. Hodgins ran it through the GCMS, and it turns out it's Sherwin-Williams brand paint in Sedate Gray #6169, flat finish."

She could hear his smile through the phone. "Good work, guys," she said and then hung up.

As she held the phone in her hand, something flashed in her brain, an image of Grant Fine's master bedroom. She grabbed Booth's shoulder and shook him gently. "Gray paint flecks?" she mused aloud.

"What?"

"They found gray paint flecks on Clarimonde's body."

Booth's eyes widened when he caught a whiff of where she was going. "Grant Fine had gray paint in his bedroom."

"Exactly! You need to get a CSU team over to that house and check for blood spatter, hairs and fibers, chips in the paint, anything that could connect the bodies with his home. We may just have our crime scene after all." She was smiling triumphantly, and in that moment, she began to feel like the old Temperance Brennan again.

She was the scientist who looked objectively at facts and gathered evidence to put the guilty parties behind bars, however much she wanted to like them. She was the Brennan who didn't care about broken taluses and psychology. She was the Brennan who was focused on her work instead of the man she was working with.

-----

CSU spent several hours combing the Fine house for evidence, and although the bedroom didn't yield much forensically, one excited tech finally approached Booth, who had been watching his team work from the sidewalk. The agent put down his pad of notes he'd been collecting from the interested neighbors when CSI Dobson ran up to him and took hold of his elbow. "Agent Booth, I think you'll want to see this."

Dobson led him into the foyer of the house and then into the living room. There was a pair of other techs standing nearby, one dusting the baseboard with a black powder and the other tweezing grime from between the floorboards. "Show him," Dobson instructed the tech with the tweezers.

The CSI grabbed a UV light from the corner, switched it on and shined it over the wall about a third of the way from the ceiling. A brilliant blue flare appeared on the wall. The spot wasn't very large to begin with, but the swipe marks through it made it even more difficult to tell how big it originally was. "Blood," Dobson said matter-of-factly. "Pattern of dispersal is consistent with blunt force trauma to the head, probably from a hand or an elbow slamming the skull forcefully into the wall."

"It's lower than I expected," Booth remarked.

"We figure the victim was crouched, maybe running from the attacker. Would explain the awkward position. The problem is the blood's been cleaned very thoroughly a long time ago. It's going to make getting a positive DNA match to your victims impossible, but Markal's—" Dobson pointed to the tech with the light "—checking for residual splatter that may have eluded the perp's bleach."

Booth tapped his finger against his cheek. "No second blood stain anywhere else in the house?"

"Sir, we've Luminoled this place from chimney to basement drain. Not a drop anywhere else. I'd say your attacker snatched them here. Not enough blood to be a murder scene, but something bad definitely happened to the victim here."

Booth stared hard at that luminous splotch on the wall. It was mesmerizing, like a hypnotist's pocket watch, and the more he stared at it, the more he fell into the mysteries of this case.

He was glad Brennan wasn't here as well because if she saw this, she would have lost that killer spark in her eyes she had just gotten back. Whatever ghosts were stirring in Temperance Brennan were hindering this case instead of helping it, and at this point, Booth had to consider himself an exorcist. He had wisely dropped her back at the Jeffersonian after convincing her that her expert skills might uncover even more trace her assistant may have missed.

Even when Markel turned off the light, the image of the blue stain did not leave Booth's mind. This did not bode well for Grant Fine because the blood had been cleaned up and who better to take care of that task but the impeccable homeowner. But, at the same time, it corroborated his initial report that Clarimonde and Hannelore had been abducted from the house by a stranger. If Fine killed them, he certainly didn't do it from the comfort of his own home.

-----

Meanwhile at the Jeffersonian, Brennan was working her crew double time. She considered them rested and refreshed, even though they'd only had a few hours to sleep before wearily dragging themselves back to the lab.

About an hour after Booth and his CSU team had entered the Fine residence, a young agent came trotting across the lab floor with a delivery for Brennan. It was a sample of the paint from the master bedroom, which she gave immediately to Hodgins. While he tested it, she felt every second of the interminable wait. If it matched, it would completely break the case open.

Finally, the GCMS beeped, and every head twisted to look. Hodgins took one look at the results before facing the team. "I compared the sample of the paint the FBI collected from Fine's master bedroom with the paint from Clarimonde's body, but I don't think you're going to like what I have to say," Hodgins began.

"It didn't match," Brennan said.

"Not even close. The paint from the bedroom is a semi-gloss red-gray called Spalding Gray. They don't even carry the brand at Sherwin-Williams. Your crime scene is still out there."

Brennan sighed and then realized she had to call Booth with the bad news. He answered his phone after the second ring, "Booth."

"It's Brennan. Hodgins said the two paints don't match. Fine didn't kill them."

"He didn't kill them in his house at least, but there's still the matter of a blood stain in the living room."

She blinked in shock. "Blood stain?"

"I'll brief you on it over at FBI headquarters," he said. He sounded distracted, and in a minute, she found out why. "I'm pulling Fine in for questioning right now."

"I'll be there in a few minutes," she said and hung up. She shucked off her lab coat and gloves and let her team know where she was headed: to catch a killer.


	6. Six Below

_Author's note: Some racial epithets in here, just to warn you, so this chapter's rating is most definitely for a mature audience._

_Sorry for the wait on this chapter. I was in Charleston, SC, with my family for a long weekend. Had a wonderful time, and it inspired me in more ways than one. I hope this was worth the wait._

_Again, thank you, everybody who's been reading, and especially those of you that have reviewed. It does my heart good to hear you're enjoying it. I hope to continue to excite you._

**Six**

Brennan snatched a visitor's badge from the front desk at the FBI and hurried to the interrogation room, where she found a clearly irritated Agent Booth. He was standing on the other side of the two-way mirror, watching Grant Fine carefully. Brennan maneuvered herself beside him and breathed a terse greeting.

"Where have you been?" he snapped.

"I had to delegate some tasks. What's the big deal?"

"I've had this guy sweating in there alone for twenty minutes."

She studied the man through the glass. He was the average middle-aged American male, with a full head of curly salt-and-pepper hair and thick eyebrows that matched. His white overalls were stained and dirty, presumably from the fish he handled at his job. His chin was stubbly, and there was a red mark on his neck that he kept scratching, but he didn't seem overheated. "He doesn't appear to be perspiring," she commented.

"No, Bones, it's cop lingo for—forget it. Never mind, it's not important."

"Are you suggesting that he's nervous, because he doesn't act like he is. Look at the way his arms are stretched languidly across the table and how he's slouched back into his chair. Notice how his eyes are directed at the ceiling and how his lips are moving rhythmically; I'd say he's counting something, probably the ceiling tiles. He's bored."

Booth scoffed at her. "Bored? Bored! The guy is sitting in an FBI interrogation room! He's not bored."

"He's bored," she casually insisted.

"He's not bored, Bones, stop it. If you came over here to piss me off, you've completed your mission, I'm pissed off."

"I'm just insinuating that he doesn't seem like a man about to confess to murder."

"Great, then he's a sociopath about to leave and do it again."

They both sighed at one another, equally frustrated already. Brennan decided to break the silence first since she had the biggest question to ask. "Tell me about the blood the CSU found."

Booth pursed his lips as he debated whether or not he was in the mood to tell her, but one look at that intrigued face, and the debate was over. "The team found a swatch of blood on the living room wall. They're not going to be able to get DNA off of it because it was cleaned with bleach years ago, but it doesn't bode well for Fine that it's in his house, which he's decided to sell."

Brennan said nothing. She was mulling over the information in a careful way, cataloguing it with all the other data she'd complied during the case so far. Things still didn't add up for her. There were too many gaps, like why the skulls had been switched and where the other body was.

"Just a swatch?"

"You were right," he relented, "the house was definitely not the murder scene, but something violent happened to those girls within those walls." More silence.

Brennan looked back into the interrogation room. It was somber and bare in there, and she was vaguely reminded of the look of Fine's bedroom. There was nothing inside other than the metal table and four chairs, Grant Fine, and a cup of coffee someone had brought him.

Finally, Booth said, "Are we doing this or what?"

"It's your investigation," she replied brusquely, and the agent prepared to enter the room. He straightened his jacket over his shoulders and flipped one side over his gun, a subtle reminder who was in charge.

Booth opened the door to the room, and Fine immediately sat up in his chair. He angled himself to get a better view of the agent and his partner, a pretty woman who looked nothing like FBI. Booth pulled out the chair opposite the suspect and opted not to sit down but to prop one leg up in a position of authority. "Grant Fine, I'm Special Agent Booth, and this is my partner, Dr. Temperance Brennan," he began unceremoniously.

Fine set Brennan in his sights—she looked like the more sympathetic one—and smiled. "Hello," he said.

"Don't smile at her," snapped Booth. "Plan on luring her back to your place and slicing her open too?"

Fine leaned back hard into his chair. The cold metal bit against his back, and it was a harsh reminder that this wasn't a dream. "Excuse me? What the hell are you talking about?"

Booth hovered over the table, his face encroaching into Fine's personal space. "You know what I'm talking about," he growled. "The deaths of Clarimonde and Hannelore Ruh."

The color melted right out of the man's face. He looked positively sick, and Brennan finally noticed beads of sweat on his forehead, though it was hard for her to conclude whether it was because he was guilty or because he was distraught. His hands gripped the edge of the table so hard she could see the knobby heads of his metacarpals. His mouth slackened, and she could hear every ragged breath he took.

"They're dead?" he stuttered.

"Of course they're dead. You killed them."

The look of revulsion that danced across Fine's face could only be referred to as perfect; it was the truest demonstration that Brennan had ever seen. If he was acting, she didn't want to know what true horror looked like.

"You think I killed my family?" he asked incredulously.

"You weren't married to Clarimonde," Booth said.

"And you're not married to your partner, but you're not actually going to sit here and tell me you don't consider her family?" Fine glanced at Brennan, who watched him with a seamless guise of distance, but inside she was reeling. She was dying to look at Booth and see how he had responded, but she couldn't risk taking her eyes off of Fine.

Booth, however, was anything but distant. He had no doubt that Grant Fine was smarter and more perceptive than he looked, which made him dangerous. Yet despite thinking these things, he couldn't keep his hound-dog focus on just him anymore.

Booth used his periphery to watch Brennan. She sat unmoving in the chair next to his, a statue of cool radiance. Remembering the kisses he had planted on her that very day, how could he look at her now and not consider her, in some way, his family? How could he neglect the moment on the porch when she had almost become his? The simplest answer was that he couldn't. Fine, the brilliant bastard, was right.

Not to be deflected from the investigation though, Booth repeated, "Clarimonde and Hannelore Ruh."

"Those are names I haven't heard in a long time," Fine said softly. He cast his eyes to the smooth sheen of the table and worried the inside of his lip.

"Blocked them out of your memory, huh?"

"No, no!" he said quickly. "I could never forget them. Those women were my whole life. They day they disappeared, part of me did too."

"That's a pretty little saying. Brought a tear to my eye, really."

"Booth," Brennan chastised gently. She didn't understand why he was coming down so hard on Fine. Yes, he was a suspect, but there was no substantial evidence conclusively linking the guy to the crime. Before Booth had told her the details about the blood, Brennan had been ready to believe he was the murderer, too, but now that she saw how pitiful he was, now that she saw how impacted he was by the resurfacing of these old wounds, she couldn't feel that same level of certainty that her partner did.

Booth glared at her, a look that clearly told her this was his suspect and his home turf, and he would question the man how he pleased. He returned that same piercing gaze to Fine. "You want to tell me again what happened the night the Ruhs disappeared."

Fine was reluctant. He folded his hands together and proceeded to squeeze and release them repeatedly. Now he was "sweating," just as Booth had intended. He closed his eyes and took one slow, deep breath. As he spoke, he swayed smoothly to the right and left; it was a sort of defense mechanism, Brennan conjectured, that he had perfected throughout his life since the Ruhs, a way to calm himself when the memories grew too strong.

"It was a cold Saturday. I remember because I had forgotten my jacket in my hurry to leave for work in the morning, and Claire ran out after me in her bathrobe. I asked her what she would be doing that day, and she said she and Hanna would be taking their afternoon walk through the park. It was a regular thing, these walks, because Hanna, well, Hanna needed structure, and a regular routine helped her focus.

"I kissed Claire goodbye and went to work. When I came home around six that evening, they were gone. The front door was unlocked and slightly ajar. I remember that clearly because it was so cold out, and as I hurried to get my key from my pocket, I leaned against the door and I fell inside.

"At first I thought they were home because Claire's favorite record, The Beach Boys' _Endless Summer_, was still playing on the record player. She loved the sound of records. Hanna hated them, said they made her feel like she was living in the prehistoric." Fine stopped and smiled wistfully. His swaying was broader now, and Brennan thought he might still be hearing the music of that album in his mind. In spite of the subjective nature of the situation, she thought she heard the music too.

But Booth's eyes were narrowed on the man, and he did not look entertained. "What happened next, Mr. Fine?" he said briskly.

Fine ceased swaying, and his brow knitted tightly. "It stank of bleach in the house, and everything was so spotless, I figured Claire had gone off on one of her cleaning sprees. I called out for them, but no one answered. I went into the living room and turned off the record player, thinking they maybe couldn't hear me over the music. The house was deathly silent—"

"Spare me the metaphors, Fine, and just get to the facts."

Brennan was appalled by the way Booth was treating the man. She shot Booth a perfectly furious glare, but it rebounded coolly off his shoulder, and he didn't bother returning the gesture.

Meanwhile, Fine struggled to recall the memory in the briefest of terms. "I called again, no one answered. I noticed one of the photographs in the living room was askew, so I panicked. Hanna was not known for her brilliant company, and I began to worry."

"Stop right there," Booth said. "That's the second time you've talked about Hannelore like she was a criminal. Sounds like an awful lot of negativity to me. Maybe she was bringing bad types around your house, wrecked your picture perfect view of life with Clarimonde, and you needed out."

Fine slammed his palms down on the table, a move which simultaneously startled Brennan and piqued Booth's interest. He was getting a rise out of the guy, which was good for him because it was dangerous for Fine. If he kept pushing, the guy was sure to spill the unadulterated truth, and Booth wouldn't have to tap dance anymore.

"That's a lie!" Fine yelled.

"Now, now, Fine, no need to fly off the handle. Unless, of course, it's true."

The suspect collapsed onto the table helplessly. "It's not. Hanna was a smart girl, but she was also a young, capricious girl. She knew she was beautiful, and she knew how to flaunt it to get what she wanted. I thought it was all part of the typical teenage rebellion thing. I mean, sick mother with a younger boyfriend—"

"Not that much younger," Booth interjected.

Fine frowned. "You must not be around a lot of teenagers, Agent Booth. It doesn't take much to upset them. Hanna had been forced to leave her friends behind in Germany and come to a country that didn't speak her first language. I mean, yeah, she spoke English beautifully, but to not have that connection with people anymore… It was rough on Hanna, but we were fighting to get through it. She didn't make it easy though. She was always breaking curfew, coming home smelling of cigarettes and weed, and sometimes sex."

"I'll bet that made you angry."

"Damn right, it made me angry," he seethed. "It would make any parent angry, a fifteen year-old girl doing things like that. Claire was beside herself. She knew how that kind of a lifestyle would affect Hanna, and she wanted to stop her before she hurt herself.

"The worst part about it was, we were finally starting to reach her. Hanna was getting the message. She stopped seeing the clique that was influencing her, she distanced herself from the drug scene, threw out her all-black wardrobe. She was going to go to college here in the States."

Booth decided to slow things down a bit, humor the guy and feel out his story. Even though he felt Fine was hiding something, there was always a chance he wasn't the killer, and he needed all the details he could get. "Tell me about these friends Hanna had."

Fine ran a hand across his forehead and through his hair, smearing the sweat away and calming himself. With his eyes half-closed, he said, "They were trash, the kind of people that spend their lives drinking Forties outside a gas station and smoking cigarettes paid for with money they stole from their grandmothers. Just sick. They didn't care about anybody but themselves.

"Sometimes late at night, they would roll up outside the house and honk until Hanna had to go out with them, otherwise they'd never leave. Controlling s.o.b's," he spat. "That's how Hanna got sucked in. Once they get a hold of you, they never let go. They're like a gang or a virus." Fine lowered his head in sorrow. So many old wounds reopened in under an hour.

Booth sensed him weakening and knew he had to press even further, milk all the information he could from him. "You got some names of these parasites?"

"Yeah, yeah. Julio Chavez, he was Hanna's sometimes-boyfriend. Malcolm Green, Montera Gordon, Maria Iguelo, and some guy she called Romeo, but I'm sure that wasn't his real name. I never met him, but Hanna always mentioned him when she talked about that group.

"I haven't seen them around since Hanna disappeared, which is just fine for me. I don't want to ever see any of them again. As far as I know, they kidnapped her and her mother."

"Why would you suspect them?"

"One time I overhead Julio and Hanna after they'd had sex in her room."

Booth and Brennan exchanged surprised looks. Fine noticed and said, "I told you, she had a hard time adjusting.

"Anyway, they were arguing. Apparently Hanna had called him by another name, and he was outraged."

"Whose name?"

"Malcolm's," he admitted. "It was shortly after that fight that Hanna decided to break all contact with her group. She said things were getting out of hand in school, that Julio was making threats to Malcolm and that the group was now divided right down the middle."

"Did Julio or any of the gang come around again to try and woo her back?"

Fine nodded. "Maria and Montera called a few times, but Hanna refused to talk to them. Julio and Malcolm called too, but Claire and I decided it was best to start screening all calls, and as far as I know, Hanna never called any of them back.

"And one night, about a week before the girls went missing, Julio drove up outside. He laid on the horn a while and started singing a song for Hanna that I'd never heard. I opened the front door and told him to get the hell away from us, that she didn't want to see him anymore, and if he came around again, I would call the police. That was the last time I saw him."

Booth jotted all of these notes down. He had to admit, according to this guy's story, these were legitimate motives why Julio could be involved in the murders, but he was not about to rule Fine out yet.

As her partner gathered notes, Brennan took the opportunity to ask what had been burning in the back of her mind for most of the interview. She caught Fine's eyes and said, "Mr. Fine, Claire and Hanna, which park did they walk in?"

"Anacostia Park, of course. It's right down the street."

"And were they ever accosted, or did they ever get the feeling they were being watched?"

Booth shook his head. "Bones," he said in the warning tone that told Brennan she was on thin ice, "I'm the one asking the questions."

"What? That park is where we found the skeleton. It makes sense that someone could have spotted them in the park and followed them home. The killer could have forced his way into the house, taken them off-guard and back to the park where he felt safe."

"Oh, so you're sure it's a male killer now?"

"No, but it's less cumbersome to say 'he' rather than 'he or she' and 'him or her' over and over again. I simply chose the more likely sex to commit a crime of this brutality."

"Oh god," Fine said, burying his head into his heads, and instantly Brennan felt contrite. She was so used to talking in clinical terms that she constantly forgot the human side to every tragedy. All those times Booth and Angela had harped on her about it, and she still never remembered. Somehow the glaze of nausea over Grant Fine's face served as her final reminder to watch her tongue.

"I'm sorry," she stumbled and turned to Booth for help. He used this thumb to motion her to the door, and she followed.

Out in the hall, he towered over her with hands on his hips. He narrowed his eyes and scowled. "You want to tell me what you're doing in there, running _my_ end of the investigation, hm?"

"I was just trying to find other options for suspects. Grant Fine seems awfully affected by the news that his family is dead."

"Okay, since when are you on the suspect's side?"

"I'm on the victims' side, Booth. I just want to get to the bottom of this, and focusing on just this guy might be the wrong choice."

Booth grabbed the bridge of his nose and pinched. A few passing agents stared quizzically at his partner and him, but Brennan returned their gazes with an aggravated glower. "That's why I asked him for the names of Hannelore's friends. I am capable of running an interview all by myself."

She ignored his quip and steered the conversation where she wanted it to go. "While we're on the subject of sides, why are you so opposed to his?"

Her voice was that exact steady and controlled cadence to which Booth had grown accustomed, although it alternately enraged and soothed him. "That guy is lying to us, Bones. He's telling truths that suit him and hinder us."

"How can you know that?"

"I just know. From here on out, anything that concerns the land of the living is my dominion, kay? You want to play Sheriff Brennan, do it on your own time," he said with a tone of finality. Brennan, annoyed and exhausted, watched with an open mouth as he yanked the door to the interrogation room open and walked back in without glancing at her.

"Geez," she mumbled to herself before reentering the room, "you don't have to be so rude."

Booth resumed his dominant stance across from Fine. He opened a file on the suspect and began to flip through the pages in front of him in an attempt to spook him a little. The agent dragged his finger down a list of interesting facts about the man until he landed on one piece in particular he was interested in. "So you've got a 28-year old daughter too? Let's see, that would make you about fifteen when she was born."

Fine nodded. "I learned the hard way about the birds and the bees. It was a mistake, but I love Beth the same as I loved Hanna, so you can understand then why I was so upset with Hanna's behavior. I loved her because I saw myself within her, but I also feared for her, for just such a reason. I don't deny I've made mistakes in my life, but haven't we all?"

"Not according to some people," Booth grumbled at Brennan, who shot him a furious look.

"I've worked very hard to keep my life together. When Claire came along, I knew I had a chance at real happiness. She was so full of life, so carefree for someone so ill. Watching her pick dandelions in the summer, it was like feeling alive for the first time. Here was a woman who lived in fear her whole life, who was barely able to have a child, and now she was spinning in sunshine with a handful of flowers." He trailed off as his eyes glistened, and finally his head just collapsed against the table.

"Are we done yet?" he begged miserably.

Booth puckered his lips in thought, but he decided he had enough for now. He leaned in toward Fine and said, "Don't even think about going anywhere. I'll have more questions, and you need to be around to answer them."

"Of course, of course." When Fine stood up, he wiped some tears from his eyes with his fingertip and cleared his throat. He thanked them both and promptly left the room, no longer the bored man Brennan had seen before the interview. Now he was a hunched-over shell of a human being, one whose dreams had evaporated like boiling water.

Booth collected the file he had just breezed through and pushed in his chair. Brennan scowled angrily at him, but he either didn't notice or refused to acknowledge it—she wasn't sure which made her madder. He had been so callous, so bitter, so focused on finding the truth at whatever cost.

And that's when it slammed into her, the realization that he had switched roles with her on this case. She was overly empathetic, and Booth was more objective, despite her best efforts. She wanted to believe Fine was the person he said he was, but Booth was just looking at the clues. How had things come this far?

She looked over at her partner, who was gathering his materials and heading out the door. Brennan watched his shoulders tense under the tight fabric of his suit jacket. She followed him into the hall and cleared her throat—she would need all of her voice for the battle she was about to wage.

"I don't think he did it," she said in as sturdy a voice as she could muster.

He turned instantly and narrowed his eyes at her. "Based on what, Bones? The guy is lying through his teeth."

"You don't know that. I didn't see you strap a lie detector to him, and even if you had, they're not conclusive. I just," her voice faltered slightly, "think he loved them."

Booth took two powerful strides toward her, and then he was only inches from her face. He lowered his mouth until it was dangerously close to hers. His eyes searched hers for a moment, but she wasn't sure what he was looking for so she simply stared back. "You believe in love now?"

As she watched his lips work, she felt her balance shifting forward to the balls of her feet, and when she regained control, she realized she was leaning perilously close to his mouth. Her mind could not answer this question, but in some way, her body seemed to want to. She forced herself back and said nothing.

But Booth would not relent. "Since when do you consider feelings as factual evidence?"

Brennan averted her eyes and began walking down the hall. Booth matched her speed, much to her dismay. "I cannot deny a direct correlation between a suspect's emotions and state of mind to violent crimes. That following, someone who believes he's in love is less likely to kill the two most important people in his life unless he was challenged or felt he had no alternative choice. From what I can tell, Grant Fine only wanted to protect his loved ones."

"Maybe he thought killing them was protecting them. Hannelore was a handful. She brought all kinds of shady characters around the house, so Fine killed her and Clarimonde to spare them a life of torment."

Brennan shook her head. "That theory doesn't correspond with what the bones are telling us. Fine reported them missing one year before they died, don't forget. Where did he keep them all that time, and why did he finally snap and then brutally cut Claire and feed her to the rats?" Brennan was well aware of the fact she was calling the victim by her nickname, and despite the hazard it presented for her as an investigator, it just felt right.

The slip did not pass Booth's notice either, and he quirked an eyebrow, but she pushed onward. "Your supposition doesn't fit for a man so in love he changed his entire existence after their disappearances."

Booth grabbed her arm and swung her around. One of the nearby secretaries ceased her phone conversation to observe the tense situation. When Booth realized the extra attention he was receiving, he dropped his partner's arm, and she stood up straighter. He straightened his tie and tried to remain calm, despite how incensed he was at Brennan's constant stubbornness.

Deciding concern was the best course of action, he softened his tone. "You're assuming a lot, Bones, and that's not like you. What's going on here? Why are you so hell-bent on believing Grant Fine's story?" He eyed her intensely, and no matter how she moved, Brennan could not escape the heat of the gaze.

"I, I." She paused and searched the hall for answers, but found none. "You're right," she finally agreed, because it was easier to concede than to admit what she was feeling. "It still could be Fine. I just don't find it likely that an adoring father figure could buck off his self-elected role as paternal protector so completely that he could commit these crimes. Anthropologically speaking, the familial role is cherished and valued; it doesn't make sense to me that he would sabotage that so lightly."

Booth laid a hand on her shoulder when he noticed she was trembling. He knew the case was hitting close to home, especially the issue of a parent disappointing a child—that had been her whole life. She glanced at him from the corner of her eye and tried to relax, but was unsuccessful.

"It doesn't make sense to you because it's not just anthropology. This is psychology, Bones, and you're going to have to accept the fact that Fine could be a deviant or a sociopath."

Brennan nodded but allowed herself a smug, tight smile. "That's still anthropology. 'Sociopath' comes from 'society' and the understanding that one has an inability to form relationships with other members of said society; hence anthropology, or the study of human beings in relation to origin, classification, environmental and social relations, and culture."

The agent laughed. "Touché."

-----

As he sat patiently before a thick wall of glass, Booth pondered how exactly he had come to be in this chair.

After their discussion in the hallway of the Hoover Building, he had dropped Brennan back at the Jeffersonian because, honestly, he needed a break from the forensic anthropologist. She was distracting him more than usual; it wasn't just the magnetic pull that he felt on a regular basis. The problem was that she was acting less like Bones, and more like Temperance, if that made any sense.

The more Booth thought about it, the clearer it became. Yes, Brennan was still the brilliant scientist he could count on to find those cryptic clues, but this case she had become someone else, someone with whom he was unfamiliar. She was a woman too, haunted, mysterious and vulnerable. He didn't think it possible, but he was more attracted to her now than ever.

Whether she knew it or not, Brennan needed him, and he needed her, that much was clear to him. She was desperate to solve this case, and desperation made people do stupid, careless things. Without the protection of her scientific sense, Brennan was in danger of losing herself in the alien territory that was her heart.

Which was why Booth had prudently chosen to drop her off at the lab, where she was least likely to fling herself into some vigilante mission without him, and he had driven alone to Capitol Jail.

Armed with a notepad and another folder of case details, Booth waited for the man he was supposed to meet. After only a moment, his guest had arrived.

A muscular young black man in a bright orange jumpsuit seated himself in a chair on the other side of the glass from Booth. His hairline and brow were spotted with sweat, as he had probably just come in from the exercise yard, but it wasn't much cooler inside. Booth could feel a wave of heat begging to escape from under his collar, but he stayed calm so as not to show it.

The top three buttons of the inmate's jumpsuit were undone, revealing the wide arc of a tattoo that read "FATE." He cracked his knuckles and flexed his forearms, which were also covered in tattoos—everything from crucifixes to bleeding hearts. His sharp eyes watched the FBI suspiciously, and he sucked on his teeth.

The man made no move toward the phone. He was testing Booth; he wanted him to make the first move, but Booth refused. He knew that eventually the inmate's curiosity would get the better of him, and he would pick up the phone; he just had to bide his time.

For several interminable minutes, there was a stalemate between the two tough guys, but one glance at the wall clock, and the inmate decided not to waste any more time. He reached for the filthy handset, all the while keeping his stony eyes on Booth. The agent mimicked the man's movement and brought the phone smoothly to his ear.

"You the G-man who was lookin' for me?" the inmate asked. He had a smooth cadence to his voice, most likely highly practiced for his time in jail so as not to show any risky emotion.

"Malcolm Green? I'm Agent Booth. I'm investigating the deaths of Clarimonde and Hannelore Ruh."

This response surprised Malcolm, and he leaned back as casually as he could manage in his chair. Despite the laid back motion, there was a stiffness to his sinews that Booth picked up on at once. Malcolm Green had been in prison three and a half years; Booth doubted he had heard those names since his incarceration.

Malcolm rested an arm across his hard stomach and cocked his head to the right. "Now what you want to talk to me about that for? I ain't had nothin' to do with it."

Booth leaned closer to the glass and focused his skeptical eyes on him. "You killed Hanna's boyfriend, Julio Chavez. That tells me you had at least a little say in the matter."

Malcolm shot up from his seat and bumped an angry fist into the glass. A guard was quick to step forward, and he reluctantly leaned back. "I didn't kill that fool, but seein' as I got blamed for it anyways, I probably should have."

The agent flipped open the case file on Julio Chavez's murder and withdrew a crime scene photo. He pressed the picture of the young man's splayed body in a dark alley up against the glass. "You don't remember kicking the crap out of Julio and then shooting him in the head?" Booth asked with doubtful tone.

"I was framed," he spat back.

"So your hair and skin under his nails, that was planted?" Malcolm said nothing. "And the gun that shot him, someone snuck into your room at night and slipped that between your mattresses? Oh, and the necklace Hannelore had given him as an anniversary present, that just magically appeared in your dresser drawer? Need I go on?"

Malcolm looked away, but Booth was determined to find some answers today. "Despite the laundry list of evidence the cops assembled against you, you still maintain your innocence today, all these years later. Come on, Malcolm, it's time to get real."

"Real? You wanna talk real?" The man had his palm pressed flat against the glass, and Booth noticed a number of defensive wounds marring the brown skin, obviously received his first year in prison. "Hanna and I were really in love. I loved her, man. Julio was just a tool she was using 'cause he scored her some good crank. From the first day we met, we wanted to be together, but that spic would never let it happen. Always had to be in charge." Malcolm spit when he talked.

"Sounds like some bad blood between you two."

"Damn straight, but I sure as hell didn't kill him. The punk who did is still out there while I rot in this hellhole. Justice my ass."

Booth looked down at the notes on the case. Julio had been murdered the night of the kidnappings and Malcolm had been arrested two days later. It was impossible that either could have been the torturers and killers of the two women since they'd been held captive for a year. Booth decided to change tactics.

"When you and Hanna were together, did you know a Romeo?"

Malcolm squinted as he tried to remember if he'd ever heard the name. After a second, he shook his head. "Not while we were in school."

Booth frowned. "She never mentioned him, talked about hanging with him? Nothing?"

"Not that I can remember."

"None of your gang went by that nickname?"

"Hell no. Hanna only ever hung with me or Julio, and the girls 'course. She woulda told me if some other fool had come around and tried to get with her. Why, you think he's the one who put me in here?"

"No," Booth said carefully, images of a pleading Grant Fine swimming in his brain. "No, I don't think there is a Romeo, but I just wanted to make sure."

The guard came up behind Malcolm and informed him time was up. The inmate acted like he didn't care and said, "I don't want to be here for no more fifteen years. I can't say goodbye to Hanna from no jail cell. Find out who put me in here, man, please."

"That's going to be hard to do since I think you did it."

Malcolm dropped the tough guy routine for a fraction of a second. He caught Booth's eyes and pleaded with him. There was a clarity to their brown depths that the agent had never expected to see. In spite of the mountains of proof that Green had been Chavez's killer, his eyes were those of a scared young man. Of course, he had been played before, like with the serial killer, Howard Epps, who Booth and Brennan had inadvertently helped escape the death penalty, which was all the more reason he hung up the phone without saying anything else and left the prison.

-----

Temperance Brennan had spent the last two hours thinking. Once Booth had dropped her off at the lab, she went straight for the safe confines of her office and plopped down in her desk chair. As she sank into the cushiony goodness, she tried to focus on the details of the crime, but only one image filled her mind: Grant Fine and the soft look in his eyes as he spoke of Claire and Hanna.

"_Love is unpredictable," Booth had told her the day they found the skeleton. "It overwhelms you, consumes you, breathes life into you; it changes who you are."_

Over the course of the last two days, Brennan had had to reluctantly admit that what Booth had told her was true: she did not know what love was anymore. Any understanding of it had been launched out the window after her abandonment by all of her family members. The healthiest relationships she'd been in since then could be whittled down to one: David. In his eyes, she could do no wrong. Was this love?

After meeting Grant Fine, she had begun to think it was. She and David hardly ever argued other than playfully. He was always thinking about her, bringing her tokens of his affection, taking her to exciting new places, showing her how beautiful he thought she was. But did this change who she was? Maybe. Brennan had to confess that when she was with David, she felt like a different woman. It was refreshing to be around someone who didn't remind her of death and the dark side of human nature. David was alive, just like Claire was alive to Grant.

This was completely contrary to her relationship with Seeley Booth. All they ever did was bicker and aggravate each other while navigating through a world of destruction and hatred. Yes, when she was with Booth, all she could do was think about him, but Brennan didn't think this was such a good thing, seeing as more than half the time she was thinking about how she could incapacitate him, steal his gun and his car, and do investigative work the way she wanted to.

Of course, Booth had changed her too, in his own way. He had softened her hard edges, she realized that, though she'd never admit it to anyone. When she was with him, she was conscious of her behavior, she was more like a normal person. And what of her behavior that day on the porch of Fine's old house? She had almost kissed her partner. But was that love?

How was she to know the difference between love and friendship? If she followed her own definition like she wanted to, love was based on compatibility and similar interests. In that case, she was in love with David. Yet she knew there had to be more to it. Inwardly, Brennan roared with frustration. She might never know what love was at this rate, and what was worse, she couldn't rationalize to herself why she should be focusing so much time on this when she needed to be solving Claire and Hanna's murders. She felt selfish and cruel, yet she couldn't fight back the desire to discover what love was. The Ruhs had had it, and she wanted it too.

Her mind traveled back to Grant Fine. After listening to his story, she had begun to think love was in the details. The memories he had described were alive and vivid—the Beach Boys, dandelions, a winter coat. She wanted memories of her own like that. If she thought back to the times with her family before the anger and the loneliness, she could recall details with the same clarity.

As she reflected, Brennan discovered the reason why she wanted to believe him. Grant had single-handedly dispelled the persistent images of the shattered ankle and mutilated woman from her mind and replaced them with a zoetrope of light and color. Brennan felt like she could breathe again, like she could feel the earth underneath her feet. She had never been one to believe in predetermined fate or destiny, but she felt like she was on the right path now.

Brennan was so immersed in her thoughts that she did not see the figure in her doorway. "What's the matter, Dr. Brennan? You look particularly pensive."

She swiveled in her chair to face her boss, Dr. Goodman, who was watching her with concern. She sighed and uncrossed her arms, which she hadn't realized were tucked stiffly against her chest. "It's this case," she began. "For the first time since I started working here, I'm feeling something."

"Well, this is wonderful thing, Temperance," he said with a broad smile. He walked into her office and took a seat near her on her couch. "You're getting in touch with your human side."

"But I don't think it's wonderful. It's hindering my ability to be objective. I mean, I'm actually ruling a suspect out because I think he genuinely loved the victims. That's not empirical evidence, that's, that's… a romantic fancy."

Dr. Goodman released a soft chuckle. "Don't be so hard on yourself. You were bound to grow during one case or another."

This answer did not satisfy Brennan, and she growled in the back of her throat.

Instead of looking worried, Dr. Goodman smiled again. "Temperance, you're an anthropologist, and a damned good one too. You know better than most that humans evolve. We are not robots that simply pump out data and numbers; we are better than that. We are unique. Do you think any of the magnificent civilizations we have created, past or present, could have been completed without the more subjective part of our minds?

"What you're feeling right now is cause for celebration. I speak for the whole office when I say it's good to see you experiencing emotions. Make the most of it: solve a few crimes, break a few hearts, hm?" He raised an eyebrow and stared penetratingly at her, that tickle of another double entendre snaking up her spine.

He walked out the door and left her to figure out his meaning.

Unfortunately, she didn't get very far when her phone rang. It was Booth. "Bones, get outside now. We're going on a little trip."

"Oh really?" she said. "Why?"

"To make an arrest."

"One of Hanna's friends did it, didn't they?"

"No, we're going to arrest Grant Fine."

Brennan held the phone like it was frozen to her hand. She couldn't be hearing him right. It couldn't be Grant. She swallowed the lump in her throat and said, "I'll be out in a minute."

She hung up the handset, took a few deep breaths, and let the familiar wave of disappointment wash through her. Another lie, another trick, another betrayal. To love was to die, she conceded. There was no such thing as happiness, no sense of completion with love. It was all an anthropological myth perpetuated by societies in order to ensure the continuation of the species.

Reluctantly, Brennan gathered her things and left the lab to mourn the loss of something that never even existed: love.


	7. Seven O'Clock

_Author's Note: Thanks again to my friend,_ _Espantapajaros, without whom this chapter would be incomplete and missing key evidence._

_Thanks for your continued readership! If you liked this chapter, please review and let me know I'm on the right track! It does my heart good._

**Seven**

Brennan spent the entire ride over to Grant Fine's apartment lost in thought. She couldn't believe that Fine was the murderer even though everything pointed to him. Things only got worse when she and Booth entered his place only to find a pile of medical books open and spread across his coffee table, a block of sharp kitchen knives on the kitchen counter, and a toolbox full of hammers and potential weapons in the hallway. The noose was tightening around Fine's neck, and he didn't seem to notice.

He received them at his front door genially enough despite Booth's treatment of him at the FBI. He showed them in without fear. He didn't seem the least bit concerned that Agent Booth was accompanied by a uniformed police officer as well.

When Booth noticed the unusual spread on the living room coffee table, he said, "Interested in medicine, Fine?"

Grant smiled sheepishly and gathered the books up only to stuff them on an overcrowded bookshelf by the front door. "I'm going back to school to be a nurse. After I was fired from the fish wharf, I decided I'd take up my life-long passion for helping people. Claire had always wanted me to be a doctor, but I'm not smart enough or motivated enough for that. In fact, if I hadn't been fired, I probably would never have left the docks."

Booth rolled his eyes. "Look, Fine, I'm not going to beat around the bush here. I think you killed Clarimonde and Hannelore, and unless you have some damn good answers, I'm hauling your ass in."

The smile Grant had carefully crafted melted away instantly. A tremor of fear lit his eyes and he sputtered, "You've got it all wrong!"

The FBI agent merely smiled patronizingly. "You neglected to tell me during our first meeting that Julio Chavez is dead."

"Julio is… I didn't know! I swear, I haven't heard from the guy since before Claire and Hanna disappeared. If he's dead, I didn't kill him!"

Booth narrowed his eyes. "I never said he was murdered."

Fine placed a hand to his forehead and pressed so hard his skin crinkled around it. "I assumed that's what you were accusing me of. I don't know anything."

"You're really starting to get on my nerves, Grant."

"I don't understand why you're pursuing me. I loved those girls with my whole heart." His voice splintered and cracked, like a floorboard tumbling out from underneath a foot.

He looked at Brennan, whose eyes mirrored the sadness she felt inside. He noticed this instantly and turned to plead with her. "Dr. Brennan, you believe me, don't you? You know I could never do something like this."

She opened her mouth to respond, but Booth cut her off before she had a chance to say anything. "You're lying to us, Fine. You're bothering my partner, and I don't like it. This isn't a game."

"I know it's not a game!"

"You're hiding something. What aren't you telling me?"

"I've told you everything!" he shouted. His tone was desperate, and his hands implored the pair. "I've told you everything I know. Why aren't you looking for other suspects? Malcolm or, or Romeo!"

Whatever tremor of doubt Booth may have felt quickly disintegrated as the names that had brought him here were mentioned. Booth leaned coolly against the archway that divided the living room from the kitchen. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and smiled dubiously. "Malcolm's in jail for killing Julio, and there is no Romeo, Fine. He's just some guy you made up to throw suspicions off of you."

"What? No!" Fine took a seat on his sofa and hid his face away in his hands. Brennan noticed the swaying was back again. "Hanna talked about him all the time. They used to hang out, he was her friend!"

"Then how come no one from her gang remembers him?"

"But she told me…"

"What about the blood in your living room?" Booth said emotionlessly.

Fine stopped swaying and went ghostly white. If he weren't already sitting down, Brennan thought for sure he would have fallen backward. His voice quavered as he said, "Blood?"

"The blood on the wall, tell me about it."

"I never saw it," he said evasively.

"You're lying again, Grant. Tell me about the blood."

"I never—"

"The blood, Fine, tell me."

Waves of heat pulsed off of Fine's body and slammed into Booth and Brennan. Fine was at the breaking point, and Booth knew this. He would get the truth now, he would know what happened.

Brennan sat down on the couch next to Fine. She was staring at his neck, at the red mark she had noticed earlier that day. He wasn't scratching it now, and from the rugged, random edges of the scar, she believed it to be some sort of chemical burn. "How did you get that scar on your neck, Mr. Fine?"

"I came home after work, just like I told you," Fine began slowly. Brennan wasn't sure if he was answering her question or Booth's, but she let him continue. "The door was already open. I fell in, I heard Claire's music. I called out, but no one answered. I went into the living room to turn off the record player, and that's when I saw it. The blood on the wall.

"It wasn't a big spot, smaller than the size of a head, but there were blonde strands of hair in it. I knew it was Claire's. I panicked. I couldn't stand looking at that blood, not after what I saw in it. I got out the bleach and scrubbed it away, accidentally spilling some down the collar of my shirt." He pointed to the red mark and then scratched it methodically.

Fine looked over at his companion with teary eyes; his lower lip was trembling. "I didn't want to believe they were dead. I thought if I got rid of it, that would change the fact that it had ever been there at all."

Booth straightened up against the wall. He marched toward Grant and leaned over him menacingly. "You expect me to believe you just cleaned it up and forgot about it?"

"I never forgot about it, no. I never went in that room again. I paid the movers to clean it out when I left. It was forever haunted for me. No matter how hard I cleaned, I couldn't get that mark out."

"Why didn't you report the blood to the police when you reported them missing? It was evidence—it could have had clues in it," Brennan asked carefully.

"Because of what it said."

Brennan and Booth looked quizzically at one another. "It _said_ something?" Booth questioned.

"Yes, in Spanish. The word is forever branded in my mind. _Desagradecida_."

Booth looked at Brennan, who walked over to him and translated effortlessly. "It means 'ungrateful.'"

Fine nodded hollowly; he looked drained. "I had to ask a neighbor what the word meant, but I knew it had to be Julio that wrote it. I figured he was sending a message to Hanna through her mother—he had kidnapped Claire so that Hanna would go with him. I thought if I didn't tell anybody, I could conduct my own investigation, exact a little fatherly justice, find out what he had done with my family.

"So I went by his house late that night. He wasn't there, no one was. That was all the proof I needed, I mean, I knew he had to be with the girls, torturing them or something worse. I waited by his house for what seemed like ages, but no one came by at all. I found out two days later in the papers that Julio had been murdered the night the girls disappeared. He couldn't have written that message to Hanna."

Booth shook his head. "A little convenient if you ask me, Grant. Maybe Julio did take the girls. You hunted him down, found out he had killed them and then you got your 'fatherly justice.'"

Fine caught Booth's eyes and held his gaze. "You've got it all wrong, man. I got it all wrong. I know that now. Somebody set Julio up. They knew I'd go after the guy because he was Latino, and he and my daughter had a rough history. Gave the kidnapping asshole enough time to get away undetected with my girls."

Brennan looked at Booth to see what he thought of the story. She had to admit it made sense. If Julio were already dead before the kidnappings happened, the kidnapper was well on his way to conducting a perfect crime. With so many different leads to follow, the kidnapper was free to do as he pleased at his own leisure. She shivered at the thought of what that must have meant for the girls.

Booth maintained a glare of suspicion, but to Brennan's practiced eye, she could tell he was beginning to doubt Fine's role in these murders. There was another angle to explore in this: that of the missing man.

"Say I want to believe you, say I want to believe there was a third gunman on the Grassy Knoll, what about this Romeo character you invented?"

Grant Fine looked as if someone had thrown that old, starved dog a sumptuous turkey leg. He was smiling despite himself. Now was his chance to prove his innocence to a believing jury. He stood up and positioned himself between the two investigators. "I didn't invent him, I swear it!"

"Then I suggest you tell me everything you know about the guy because right now the wind's blowing in your direction, my friend."

Grant made a list of all the details he could remember about the guy, anything he had overheard or been directly told: he was older than the others (Hanna called him mature, the smart one); he lived alone; he called her late at night and she whispered to him, not because she was afraid her parents would hear, but because that was what he liked; he was secretive, and she was sure Romeo was not his real name; and he was shy—he never liked to hang with her group, just her—Hanna thought he had a crush on her.

When Fine finished, Booth looked down at his sheet of notes and said, "That's not much to go on."

"If I think of anything more, I'll tell you. I guarantee I'll have nightmares about this tonight."

Booth flipped his pocket notebook closed and slipped it back into the front pocket of his jacket. He looked at his partner, who seemed satisfied with the new lead, and he motioned to the door. She nodded, and after asking if they could take a few items (the hammer and the knives, both of which Fine had no problem relinquishing), they made their way out.

Outside, a fresh breeze enveloped them. Brennan was visibly relieved, a fact which made Booth frown. "I could still easily be him, Bones," he said as he climbed into the car. "Just because he's letting us test these things, doesn't mean he doesn't have the real murder weapons stashed somewhere." She said nothing, just smiled in a glazed sort of way. He sighed. "You know, he didn't give us a whole hell of a lot of details on this Romeo guy."

But Brennan didn't hear him. She was already thinking of ways to locate Romeo. Their best bet would be phone records, if the phone company had kept them from four years ago. If they could find out who was calling Hanna that late at night, they would be one step closer to solving the poor girls' murders, and maybe finding Hanna's body, so Brennan could finally lay her to rest.

-----

At her apartment, Temperance Brennan whisked off her shirt and slipped into a camisole, a welcome relief after the days she'd been having.

After leaving Grant Fine's, Booth seemed determined that both of them get some rest before going one step further on the Ruh case. Of course, she had made sure he placed an order for Grant's phone records from 2001 to 2002. Once she was satisfied, Brennan had permitted him to turn onto her street, and she got out of the car only after she had secured a solid promise that he would call her the instant he found out anything—no more of the four-hour, unnecessary nap garbage.

Still, as soon as she opened the door to her place and felt the soft thrum of electronically regulated cool air against her skin, she felt tired. Of course, actually getting into her bed proved a more difficult task than she expected. As she walked into the living room, she saw the red light of her answering machine blinking. She pressed the button and heard the smooth, confident voice of David Simmons.

"Hey, Tempe, it's David. Just wanted to check in and see how the case is going. You seemed a little out of sorts in the garage, and I just wanted to say I'm around if you need anything.

"I was hoping once this was over, we could pick up where we left off at the restaurant. If I remember correctly, we were going to take the leftovers back to my place and watch some vintage _King Kong_.

"Anyway, now I'm rambling. Just call me soon, kay?" The message ended, and Brennan sighed. She felt the urge to call David back and invite him over for a few hours while she recuperated, but the urge wasn't strong enough for her to actually follow through with it. Instead, she saved the message with every intention of calling him back once she woke up from a long sleep.

The weight of the case melted off of her shoulders as she readied for bed, and Brennan allowed herself to relax for the first time since picking up the Ruh case. The sensual texture of satin playfully rubbed against her skin, and she moaned inwardly. It was a deeply cathartic feeling, being back in her own bed instead of on her office couch. As much as she loved her work, nothing beat a solid sleep between Egyptian cotton sheets.

Her head crashed into her pillow, and no sooner was she asleep, then a hand was stroking her arm. Startled, she launched out of bed, her arms wind-milling with deadly accuracy. She heard a loud thump and a furious curse.

Still on guard, Brennan spun around to face her opponent, who was now sprawled in a mess on the floor. Seeley Booth was breathless and terrified at the foot of her bed. His leg was at an awkward angle, and he was trying to gingerly maneuver it into a normal position. He shot Brennan a fuming stare, to which she responded with a glower of her own. "How the hell did you get in here?" she demanded.

He held up her spare key. "Under the flower pot out front. You know, for a brilliant scientist, you're terrible at hiding things."

Brennan snatched the key out of his hand and dropped it on her dresser. "Were you sitting on my bed?"

To her amazement, his cheeks flushed, but he tried to hide the fact by looking away. "I had to wake you up," he said barely audibly.

"But you were caressing my arm!" Now that she knew it had been Booth whose hands had been on her, she felt a rush of heat travel up her arm, followed by an unprecedented spell of gooseflesh. She rubbed her naked skin as though she were cold, but really it was a clever motion to disguise the obvious affliction.

"I was not _caressing!_" he said indignantly as he stood up.

Brennan, too, climbed out of bed. If Booth was here, he obviously had information about the case. When she noticed he was staring at her body, not at her face, she raced to grab her robe. She hadn't realized how much skin she had been showing in her camisole and matching sleep shorts.

Wrapping the robe tightly around her and knotting the ribbon securely at the waist, she said, "So why are you here, other than to cop a feel from an incapacitated woman?"

"I think that demonstration proves conclusively that even if you were in a coma, you still wouldn't be incapacitated, Bones." Booth rolled his left shoulder and massaged his elbow, which he had landed on quite roughly after her attack.

Brennan would have liked to have felt some remorse over hurting him, but the guy had deserved it—barging into her locked house, sitting on her bed, touching her like that. The gooseflesh was back, and she was thankful now more than ever for the safety of her robe. She waved him off and waited for his answer to the first part of her question.

"The boys at the Jeffersonian called. They've processed the evidence."

She waited a beat for him to continue, but he did not. "And?" she said expectantly.

"We're going there."

Brennan looked at the clock. It was late now, well into the night. She had been asleep approximately six hours. "Took them long enough," she grumbled.

Booth laughed and rubbed the back of his head nervously. "Yeah, about that. They were sort of taking some cat naps, and since we both were as well, I figured it was okay to let us all get some rest."

Brennan looked like she was about to blow a gasket, but Booth continued, "I didn't break our deal, you know. I told you I'd wake you as soon as I knew anything, and, well, I did that. I just didn't make that 'anything' happen any faster."

She didn't respond—couldn't. She was afraid if she opened her mouth, she'd say something she'd regret. Brennan decided it was best to just let it go, and she turned her back to him to avoid looking at his face and thereby renew her anger.

Finally, Booth clapped his hands and said, "Well, are you going to get dressed or what?"

"Not with you in the room," she growled and bodily pushed him out of her bedroom. She sensed his feet dragging a little, and she noticed with some shock that hers were as well. If her mind hadn't remained strong, she might very well have undressed before him. That thought was almost too terrible to comprehend.

She closed the door and leaned against it. To be naked in front of Booth, oh, that conjured up all sorts of problems. The scientist within her told her it was only anatomy, but the woman within her told her it was the gateway to the unknown. Brennan had always fancied herself a pleasant combination of both: a woman who would study the unknown with tools, but the texture of that unknown Seeley Booth presented could not be understood with a microscope and a flashlight. She refused to put herself in a situation that would distract from her intense focus on the Ruh case, though she could argue it was too late for that ever since the moment on Fine's front porch where she had almost kissed him.

Hurriedly, she climbed back into the jeans from earlier but slipped on a fresh shirt, a dark green, long-sleeved number that was just conservative enough that she didn't have to feel like she was revealing too much skin to her partner's watchful eyes.

Brennan emerged from her room to find Booth reclining in a well-worn reading chair. She stared intently at him. He took in several deep breaths, and she watched his well-defined chest swell and fall. In that moment, he reminded her of a proud warrior returning home after a long day of battle; she had to smile to herself.

He caught her staring and grinned sheepishly. "Smells nice here, like you," he added quickly.

"That's my favorite chair," she said quietly and lowered her gaze.

At last, Booth remembered his cell phone and the fact that they were wanted at the Jeffersonian. He brought them back to reality by escorting her to the front door and into the SUV. They were forced to forget their connections—and disconnections—for the time being, and they rode to the lab in silence.

-----

A hush filled the Jeffersonian as most of the scientists had retired long ago after putting in their fair shares of eight or more hours. All that remained were the security guards, a handful of low-level techs who were stuck doing the grunt work and finishing late-running tests, and Team Brennan.

The devoted three huddled around Hodgins' desk, and Brennan and Booth figured it was because of the spectacular find they had uncovered while combing through Fine's possessions. Upon closer inspection, however, the pair learned it was no case-related discovery at all, but simple pile of cards.

"Dr. Brennan," Zack said worriedly.

The other two squints glanced up and noticed the solemn pair approaching them. Brennan had a fiery look in her eyes, which Angela instinctually understood she needed to immediately extinguish. "Sweetie, you have got to see this card trick Hodgins can do!"

Once he realized disaster was not quite imminent, Zack stepped forward to agree. "I'll admit, it is quite fascinating, though I'm sure it comes down to something simple, as most tricks do. I haven't figured out how he's misdirecting me just yet, but I'm confident I will."

Hodgins was enjoying the moment tremendously. He nodded patronizingly at Zack and then fanned the cards in his hand. "Pick one," he told Booth.

"What's the trick exactly?"

"Oh, Hodgins can make you pick any card he wants from the deck. Before the trick begins, he writes down a number and a suit on a piece of paper, shows it to the audience, and then asks you to pick a random card. We've done the trick, what, ten times, Zack?" The grad student nodded. "Jack hasn't missed once yet." Angela patted Hodgins on the head, and he grinned stupidly.

Hodgins thrust the deck before Booth again, and he reached out to pick a card when Brennan slapped his hand away. "We're not here to play cards, we're here to solve two murders. Now what have you guys got?"

Instantly, the feeling in the lab shifted from amusement to resignation. The group moved away from the desk toward the table where Clarimonde's bones still rested in precise alignment.

Hodgins tapped his cards back into their protective sheaf and wheeled around to face the group. His eyes, previously filled with merriment, were stony from the business at hand. "I checked all the knives for trace. There's blood on the handles and blades of almost all of them, but it's all animal—bovine, fowl and swine. The guy likes his meat, but not _Rattus norvegicus _or _homo sapiens._"

Zack walked to a nearby cart and lifted an exemplar knife. He presented it before his boss and spun it between his two index fingers. "And I compared the knives and the hammer you collected to the wounds on Clarimonde's body. None of them is a conclusive match, but the closest equivalent I could find to the knife marks is the ten-inch slicing knife. Wounds resulting from that most closely resemble the width and striations left in the bones."

"And you couldn't have told us this over the phone?" Booth said, with a touch of irritation flavoring his voice.

"Well, we could have—" Hodgins began, but Zack cut him off.

"But Angela insisted Dr. Brennan come in to see her findings."

"I didn't send her anything to process," Booth protested.

"But FBI Forensics did," Angela said as she sauntered alongside Brennan. She was wearing a brilliant smile that told the anthropologist that she had good news.

Angela ushered them out of the lab and into her own office, where she had a crime scene image of the blood spot from Fine's wall projected from her PC onto one of her huge monitors. "The boys in blue thought I might like to have a little fun."

"I'm sure they did. How did they know to send this to you, Ange?" Booth queried.

"Eh, I dated Jared Stevens in Serology. He still thinks about our hike in the Blue Ridges." She grinned deviously, but both partners knew better than to ask for details.

Angela directed their attention to the screen. Booth noticed the software program that encompassed the image, its menu bars utterly unfamiliar to him. "This doesn't look like Photoshop."

"Oh no, this is _so_ much better. Don't you just love a chick with toys?" She winked, and Booth offered a weak smile.

He stole a quick glance at his partner, but it seemed the innuendo was lost on her. Brennan was examining the screen intently. She leaned forward, her hands shoved in her pockets and her eyes scanning from top to bottom and left to right, like she was reading a priceless book.

"This, my friends, is Lucis Pro. Lucis, meet the Borings."

The pair looked at each other in horror, and then at Angela in astonishment. Booth was not nearly as upset about the revelation as his partner was, and he quite liked the way her cheeks puffed up with embarrassment. It offered him the smallest sliver of hope that she had valued that leg of the investigation more than she had let on. He debated on whether or not to make a playful move—a grab of her hand or an arm around her shoulder—but was reminded of the pain in his elbow from when she had knocked him to the floor from her bed and decided less was more.

Brennan, however, could think only one thing: "Does David know too?" Would her cell phone be ringing in an hour's time, the harbinger of their first fight? In her moment of distress, she couldn't determine whether that would be a good or bad thing.

Finally, she found her tremulous voice and said, "You heard about that?"

Angela's eyes sparkled so brightly they might have lit the room. "So it's true? I heard a rumor (thank you, Jared), but thought I'd dreamed the whole thing. Oh, this is too wonderful! Did you consummate the marriage?"

"Angela!" Brennan snapped. Her tone clearly impressed the importance of never mentioning the affair again.

"I'll take that as you plead the fifth."

Reluctantly, the artist twirled away from them and faced the computer. She traced a long finger down the gray frame of her monitor and said, "This baby shifts the contrast in an image on command without adding or subtracting anything, essentially revealing details we'd otherwise never be able to see. A loving pet from me, and presto! what once was white is now black."

"How does it work?" Brennan breathed excitedly. The possibilities of what this program could do were limitless, and she was eager to get started.

"Aw, believe me, you don't want to know that. It's all algorithms and pixel comparisons. It'll take away the magic, trust me. Let's take her for a spin, shall we?"

Angela centered her cursor over the upper of two sliders in the window that said "Preview Processing." She shifted the button to the far right, and as she did, something very strange happened to the image of the wall at Fine's.

Indeed, it was like magic. The Luminoled splotch became more precise, the individual swipe marks from Fine's cloth, long since discarded, sharpened and glowed. By the time Angela had ceased moving the bar and clicked the "Done" button, there were two images on the screen.

The one on the right was the original, shapeless blue blob, nothing remarkable about it other than the fact that it was the only evidence that a violent crime had ever taken place in the Fine residence. On the left, however, was something completely different. That same blue orb now had the very distinct shape of the side of a head, and scrawled faintly but visibly through its center was the word "_Desagradecida_."

Brennan gasped. She reached out to touch the screen, just to make sure what she was seeing was real. "I knew you'd want to see this in person, sweetie," Angela said. She watched Brennan's reaction very carefully. Her best friend had let so much ride on her belief that Grant Fine hadn't committed these atrocities, and now there was some tangible evidence to back up that belief. Angela smiled warmly and reveled in her success.

"Ange, this is amazing," the anthropologist said breathlessly. "You're amazing."

Angela blushed. Praise always sounded more wonderful coming from Brennan's lips. She rarely doled it out, but when she did, she meant every syllable. "To be honest, I didn't think anything would come up, but it's looking like your hunch is right."

Despite her dislike of the abstract term, Brennan had to agree that it had been a hunch, or at least a hope that it hadn't been Fine, and now she was looking at proof.

Of course, her good mood couldn't last for long around Agent Booth. As impressed as he was with the software's performance, he had to keep things real, no matter how much his partner would hate it. "Just because Lucas—"

"Lucis," Angela corrected and tenderly rubbed the monitor.

"—shows us some Spanish, we can't rule Fine out for good. Maybe he wrote that in there himself to make his story seem more real."

Brennan rolled her eyes uncharacteristically. It felt good to play the more subjective and passionate roll of Booth for a change. "Yes, which explains why he cleaned the blood and evidence away with bleach, and hoped that one day they would invent some software that would forensically lift the faint impression of the word."

Angela couldn't suppress a snicker. How she loved to watch the two bicker, particularly since she interpreted every squabble as a lover's quarrel, even if they weren't ready to think of it in the same way. She leaned back in her comfortable desk chair and idly rolled the thumbwheel on her mouse.

"Hey, maybe he did. All part of the perfect crime he's envisioned. I'm not ruling him out yet, Bones, no matter how much you want to."

They squared off from each other, literal lightning bolts practically shooting out of their eyes from the substantial electricity they had generated between them. Neither said anything for a several long ticks of the second hand, and Angela was about to intervene when Booth's phone did.

The ear-splitting ring lanced straight through the tension, and Booth reluctantly abandoned his staring contest to answer it. He listened to the other end of the line, recited the fax number of the Jeffersonian, and ran out of the room as he closed his phone.

Brennan and Angela remained bewildered in the middle of the office. He had left without saying a word to them, and now Brennan could finally shift her gaze back to the image of the blood. But Angela wasn't about to let her fish get away, especially since this was the first time they'd been alone since the start of this case.

"You want to tell me why you've been freaking out about this case since day one?" she began unceremoniously.

Brennan was startled by the turn of conversation, and she tried to hide it, but the attempt did not go unnoticed. Her friend maintained her constant focus, and she was forced to relent. "Children's Services had just placed me with another family in a small suburb outside of Chicago," she began steadily. "I don't really remember the house I lived in, but I remember the neighbor's."

Already Angela feared the direction this was taking.

_It was a warm June day. Temperance was walking home from the corner store with a bag of potato chips and some ranch dip for the party her foster parents were holding. The trees formed a rich green canopy over the quiet street, and elusive patches of light danced playfully across the white sidewalk. _

_She was enjoying the walk; it was the first time since moving in with the Whitmores that Temperance felt at peace. They weren't bad people—in fact, they were very generous and understanding toward her—but they weren't her parents. Still, right now, in the midst of such serenity and under the watchful gaze of the summer sun, she felt happy—that is, until she had to pass Mr. Arkem's house._

_Concealed behind a tight net of brambles and high weeds, the one-story box waited patiently for her approach. Only the rooftop peaked above the greenery, but if it was any indication of what the rest of the place looked like, Temperance could only imagine how decrepit it must look. Shingles dangled awkwardly, like the broken teeth of a pirate, and the chimney was stuffed with branches. Alan and Eileen, her foster brother and sister, had warned her the first day that she should not go near his house, not that she really needed the warning. The dark aura the house emanated was enough to make the hairs on her neck stand on end._

_On this day, there was more than just an aura to make Temperance's skin crawl. From behind the tall, wild bushes, she heard a pathetic crying. It pierced her chest and filled her heart with fear, and she felt her own eyes well up with tears at the awful siren. Accompanying the whimpering was a pungent smell, a reek she would one day grow up to know all too well…_

The door to the office swung inward, and a breathless Booth motioned them outside. Angela was reluctant to stop their conversation, but it seemed she had no choice. Brennan put on an indifferent face and stood up first. Angela followed suit, but grabbed her best friend's hand once Booth's back was turned. Brennan looked at her, and from the startled expression on her face, it was evident she wasn't sure how to respond to the touch.

"I'll be all right," she said.

"Tell me later?" Angela begged.

Brennan nodded, but the artist wasn't sure she would ever hear the rest of the story. Finally, she let go, and the pair followed the agent into the lab area.

There was a mosaic of fax paper covering the spare tables around the lab. Brennan picked up a page to examine it and found it was full of names, dates, phone numbers and times. Obviously, these were the phone records from Grant Fine's house. She perused them and noticed more than a few sheets had yellow highlights across them.

"Looks like we've got another lead." Brennan's eyes were hopeful, but Booth was quick to squelch the fire before it burned out of control. "Now, it's not proof Fine's off the hook, but I think we might have found Romeo."

He presented her with a highlighted sheet and tapped to the dates and times. They were all around the time of night when Grant had said Hanna talked with Romeo, going back as far as three months before her disappearance. That was enough to establish that Hanna had indeed had some sort of ongoing relationship with someone who wasn't Julio Chavez or Malcolm Green.

Hodgins, too, picked up a highlighted sheet, took one glance at the name of the caller and said, "Man, you have _got_ to be kidding me!"


	8. 818 Branch Avenue

**Author's Note: **_My apologies to those loyal readers who have been with WitRB since its creation back in May. I had originally intended to finish this story before season three, but obviously that didn't happen. I've been sidetracked by its sequel, as well as the end of this story, and I haven't been working on leading up to that ending. Please remember this is still set in Season 2, so new characters will not be introduced. :P _

_The good news is that future updates should be here quicker as we are only three or so chapters from the end, a lot of which are partially completed. For those of you that have kept this story on alert and never gave up that it would be completed, I sincerely appreciate it. _

_And now, happy reading!_

**Eight**

Angela and Brennan leaned over Hodgins' shoulder to take a peek at the phone records by which he was so utterly amazed. One glance, and they instantly understood the need for the dramatics.

"That's really his name?" Angela said, pointing to a highlighted line. "Mr. Giggles?"

Hodgins nodded grimly. "Oh, that's a whole carnival full of creepy. I think I saw a horror movie once where the homicidal maniac was named that."

The team took a moment to soak in the world's worst name. Nobody said it, but they were all thinking the same thing: Hodgins was right—there was no better name for a sadistic killer.

Finally, Booth cleared the air with a voice that still revealed his initial shock and discomfort. "Be that as it may, we have absolutely nothing to tie this guy to the murders yet, other than a couple of phone calls to the daughter."

Hodgins rolled his eyes. "Oh yeah, that and a big, stinking mound of creepy."

Zack frowned at his fellow squint. "Names have no correlation to violent tendencies. Think of all the Jesus-es in society. I'm sure there are plenty of people named Jesus who have committed crimes."

"An argument only Zack Addy could present," Hodgins said, and Angela grinned.

Booth scanned all the phone records over, and between January and March of 2002, Hubert Giggles had either called or received a call from the Fine household eighteen times, all between the hours of 11 PM and 1 AM, which fit the time frame Grant Fine had presented. He immediately phoned the Bureau for a background check on the guy.

While they waited for the results, the group chatted idly about lab things, about dates they were going out on or would never go out on, and Zack and Angela played a rousing verbal game of "What If…?" They talked about everything but the case, because with one exception, they were all sick to death of thinking about the Ruhs.

On the outskirts of the group stood Temperance Brennan. She tried to focus on the fun the rest of the squints were having, but she couldn't hold back the sinister image of a shadowy man lurking around the corner, his teeth white and gleaming as his lips peeled back in a hungry grin. When the group laughed, she automatically feigned a smile so that they wouldn't be clued in to her distance. But Booth was too brilliant of an investigator for her to fool.

He bumped his shoulder against hers and said, "Take a break, Bones."

"I am. I'm listening to and engaging with this bonding ritual."

"Faking a laugh and standing about ten feet away from everyone else is not called engagement." Brennan eyed him sharply, but he did not relent. "You know, you can be really charming when you're not thinking about it."

"I never think about it, so shouldn't I be charming all the time?" she retorted.

It was Booth's turn to issue her a skeptical look, which she savored with great relish. Finally, he broke into a smile, and they stood on the rim of the group, enjoying a private moment. Angela's eyes flicked in their direction, and she smiled in her sly way before she went back to chatting with the other squints.

After some time had passed, the printer beside Hodgins' computer began to hum expectantly. Booth darted to its side and waited for his prize. He snapped up the paper as it shot out of the printer, and Brennan tried to lean over his shoulder to read it, but he concealed it from her view. After some deliberation and careful examination of the paper's contents, he announced, "Giggles is clean."

"Please don't call him that," Hodgins moaned. "I feel like I'm back at my seventh birthday and the clown is looming over me with his sweaty, paint-covered face."

Everyone ignored him in favor of exchanging confused stares. "Clean?" Angela said disbelievingly.

"As a whistle. He's not in any of the systems. House in Hillcrest, lived there twenty years. A model citizen, really. Says here he was a Big Brother for two years, volunteered at an Anacostia soup kitchen..."

"There's your connection," Zack said.

Booth frowned. "Fine and the Ruhs weren't known for frequenting soup kitchens."

"Still, it gives him a reason to have seen the girls," Angela said.

Booth shrugged, neither agreeing or disagreeing. He was still of the mindset that Grant Fine had orchestrated these two deaths, but there was no denying the strange introduction of Hubert Giggles into the equation. Still, these small connections were circumstantial and innocent at best, but he couldn't argue he had anything more conclusive on Fine.

He glanced at Brennan's uncompromising face and saw how huge this break was for her. This was her chance to prove Fine innocent, and while Booth didn't want to rule him out to save her feelings, something about the strength of her conviction and the nature of Fine's story made him wish the killer was someone else too.

"That has to be the connection, right?" Brennan said.

Booth sighed reluctantly. "Maybe it is and maybe it isn't, but as far as this sheet tells me, he's a perfect gentleman."

"Well, that doesn't mean anything," Angela interrupted. "If you printed out one of those babies on me, you'd think I was married and living in Bora Bora." Hodgins quirked an eyebrow at her, and she just grinned elusively.

But Brennan would not relent. "Okay, but obviously someone was calling Hanna from his house. That does not bode well for this guy."

"There's nothing on this guy, Bones! The only parking ticket he ever got was in 1967, for crying out loud!" He shook the paper in her face, and she swatted it away. Her gaze was unbreakable.

"That can't be," she said without a hint of uncertainty.

"Well, it is. The guy's 56 years old."

She shook her head. "It's not right. He doesn't have a son?"

Booth glanced at the report in his hand. "Never married, no record of any children or child support."

"Maybe he killed them too," Hodgins added helpfully.

"Not helping," Booth said testily.

Brennan spun around, took a few steps away from the group and then turned back. Her head was cocked to the side in a way that reminded Booth that she was one of the prettiest women he had ever laid eyes on, but he kept that thought very deeply hidden because Angela always seemed to have one eye on him.

The forensic anthropologist came back to the group with a new air, an air of determination. "It looks like the only way to solve this is to pay this man a visit."

"Is that what it looks like?" Booth said in a half-amused, half-shocked tone. He rested his hand on his hip and smiled at his partner. She had no idea what sort of thoughts she was putting in his head now as she smiled broadly at him and mimicked his stance. The way the light caressed her figure and smoothed down her tantalizingly soft arm, it was almost criminal.

"I'll bet his house is like a carnival funhouse gone wrong," Hodgins said, breaking the partners' gazes.

Zack's eyes widened and he nodded his head. "Severed limbs hanging from the ceiling."

"Mirrors splashed with blood."

"Gore-covered coaster cars."

"All right," Angela interjected, "you two are making me nauseous. As if it doesn't happen enough in this place." The boys smiled conspiratorially as she clutched her stomach dramatically.

"Well, come on," Brennan said, redirecting the conversation even as she was halfway down the lab steps. "Let's burn rubber, hit the pavement! Whatever it is you FBI guys do, let's do it!"

Booth gave Angela a surprised look, but she just returned the expression with a sympathetic smile. He grabbed the print out on Giggles and hurried to catch up with his partner.

She was already slamming shut the passenger door to his car when he trotted up behind her. He jumped into the driver's seat only to find Brennan had already started the engine.

She stared expectantly out the front window until she realized something was amiss. "Why aren't we moving?" she queried.

"A little gung ho, aren't we?" She said nothing, only watched for his hand to fall to the transmission. "And while we're on the subject, how in the hell did you get my keys without me knowing?"

The expression on Booth's face was priceless, and Brennan drank it deeply. It took a lot to surprise an ex-sharpshooter, and she savored her momentary victory. After she felt the anticipation had built high enough, she shrugged as casually as she could manage and said, "What can I say? I learned a few unusual skills in Guanajuato while studying their natural mummies."

He watched her carefully out of the corner of his eyes. "I wonder what else is in your arsenal."

"Unfortunately for you, I don't think we have the kind of relationship where I can show you."

Eyebrows raised and tongue frozen firmly against the right side of his mouth in disbelief, Booth shifted into reverse, all the while unbidden images of a curious Temperance patrolling the seedy back alleys of Mexico for skills that she had any interest in acquiring swimming in the forefront of his mind. What skills did she have, and what sort of relationship did he need to have with her to know them? Did David know them? He found his foot was pressing harder on the accelerator than he wanted, and he slowly relaxed it in hopes that Brennan hadn't noticed.

She did not, however, as she sat forward in her seat, the seatbelt cutting into her shoulder and the AC blowing squarely in her face. She rubbed her hands on her knees as she watched the scenery fly by. She was vaguely aware that Booth was talking to her, so she nodded absent-mindedly. There was no hope to stay focused when they were finally on the trail of the man she believed to be the Ruhs' killer.

The city transitioned into the suburbs, and eventually, Booth turned into the shady, restful neighborhood of Hillcrest. As he cruised slowly down the street, Brennan watched for 818 Branch Avenue.

Booth parked the car in front of a quaint two-story red-brick colonial and turned to Brennan. "Ready to interview—" But she was already out of the car, staring up at the house.

The residence was perched up higher than the road, like a nest from which the rest of the world could be examined. The stone wall that hemmed in the unruly earth was immaculate and weed-free, and the banister accompanying the front steps appeared freshly painted. A Japanese maple and a soaring oak tree graced the front yard along with some carefully maintained bundles of purple and yellow petunias.

The front door was inviting with a wreath of forsythia, an image of amity and welcome; Booth marveled at it as he pressed the doorbell. There was no piercing scream, no evil cackle, just a soft buzz that reverberated through the house.

Silently, Brennan chastised herself for thinking that she might actually hear something so ludicrous coming from this house, especially in a neighborhood like Hillcrest. She decided that when she got back to the lab, she would scold Hodgins and Zack for putting silly thoughts like this in her head.

After a minute, there was still no answer, and just as Booth went to press the buzzer again, they heard the click of the deadbolt being drawn back, and the door swung inward to reveal an ordinary hallway and an ordinary man.

Hubert Giggles was no circus clown, but the epitome of plainness. He was the type of man witnesses always described with vague sentences such as, "He looked like any guy," and "It was dark, I don't know." He was of average height, ranging anywhere in age from late 30s to early 50s, with short brown hair, brown eyes and an easy smile. He had no outward distinguishing characteristics—no scars or bruises, no facial hair, no piercings, tattoos or jewelry, and no visible abnormalities.

The only thing that appeared off to Brennan was the pristine nature of his appearance, as though this image of sameness was as carefully cultivated as his lawn. His face was clean-shaven without a hint of stubble, even in the hard-to-shave places like the upper lip and over the Adam's apple. His starched white shirt was pressed and buttoned to the neck, as though he had some formal outing to attend, but in contrast to that image, he was holding a silver tea kettle in his well-manicured hand.

His eyes scrutinized the pair from head to toe, and after a second, Brennan detected a sudden change in his demeanor. Granted, she did not know the man yet, and she was certainly no judge of character, but she could have sworn she caught the transition from surprise to readiness, from defense to offense.

"Ah, visitors. Tea?" His voice was even and cool with a hint of mockery. Was he laughing at them, and if so, why? The quick way with which he offered suggested a clever mind and dangerous charm.

There was something decidedly British in Giggles' manner, but he had no hint of an accent; this intrigued Brennan, and she found herself staring straight into his dark eyes. The crests of his cheeks swelled with a small smile, and for a second, she believed he was shyly flirting with her.

Brennan tore her gaze from his and exchanged a perplexed look with Booth until her partner finally managed to find his voice. "Are you Hubert Giggles?"

"Indeed I am," the gentleman replied affably. His smile was bright and cheery and his air showed his ease. "How do you take your tea?"

"We haven't even introduced ourselves yet."

"Yes, well, I expect that will happen at some point or another, and it may as well happen over a cup of Darjeeling. I make an excellent Darjeeling; really, you must have some." Giggles backed away from the front door and headed off to the right were there was a small, cozy living room.

Booth and Brennan remained in the doorway, unsure whether they'd still be welcomed after they announced why they were there. "Uh, Mr. Giggles," Booth paused as he forced out the absurd name, "I'm Special Agent Booth with the FBI, and this is my partner, Dr. Brennan."

Despite the fact that Giggles had already taken a seat, he looked up from his cup and nodded with interest. "A doctor and an FBI agent? My, this is turning out to be an interesting day. And what are you a doctor of, Dr. Brennan?"

His gaze was intense, his eyes focused solely on her face and then, more narrowly, her lips, as though he was gauging the accuracy of her response. "I'm a forensic anthropologist."

Again, he nodded. "That makes a little more sense, I suppose. So you're the FBI's resident haruspex. Fascinating."

Brennan tried to mask her discomfort at his attentions with a witty response, but she found she didn't have one. The fact that this man had any idea what haruspicy was made Brennan's insides wriggle with uneasiness. The portrait the Ruhs' bodies had painted was of a clever man with a streak of brilliance and an equally long streak of sadism; was she already seeing these qualities within Giggles, or was she merely imposing her hopes on him? It was a terrifying question to ask herself, one she had prayed she would never have to do, and yet she found the compass of her mind pointing toward the stiff man in the chair across from her.

Thanks to Booth's confused proddings with his elbow into her side, she remembered they were still on investigation and said, "Hardly. I gather evidence from skeletal remains and corpses too badly decomposed or otherwise damaged to be sent to a forensic pathologist. It's a far cry from an ancient Roman picking through animal entrails and conjuring up subjective religious nonsense according to the placements of the liver and kidneys."

Without breaking his bemused gaze over the rim of his tipped cup, Giggles responded, "You divine truth from the sacrificed. I would say that's a haruspex."

Sacrificed? Is that what he thought of the Ruhs? Had he killed them as a sacrifice, and if so, to what god and for what purpose? "There's nothing really divine about it," she pressed on. "I look at decomposing human matter, and using empirical evidence—"

"Okay, Bones, playtime's over," Booth interjected.

He had grabbed her wrist to silence her, and it was only then that she realized she was halfway through the foyer and on her way into the living room. She marveled how effortlessly the man had lured her into his house, and almost instantaneously she was overwhelmed with images of Hanna Ruh being drawn toward a man in the shadows—was that a gun in his hand, or no, a teacup. Closer and closer, the unsuspecting fly inching toward the scheming spider.

But Booth took a much more distant stance on the situation. He was assessing a threat while his eyes scoured and memorized the layout of the house for evidence. He walked into the living room and stood opposite his suspect. He could tell Giggles wanted him to take a seat, but he was not about let this man run circles around him, even at this early stage of interrogation. He squared his feet directly under his shoulders and rested his hands coolly against his abdomen.

Brennan, on the other hand, chose the chair perpendicular to Giggles so she could study him. He was sitting perfectly upright in his chair with his right ankle resting on his left knee. He perpetually wore an amused smile, though she couldn't fathom about what he was amused. His eyes followed her slow descent into the overstuffed chair.

Without lifting his gaze from her, he grabbed the additional teacups he'd brought in and proffered her one. She shook her head. Brennan didn't imagine he had issued it as a challenge, but she took it as one and used it as an opportunity to examine him.

Agent Booth, however, witnessed the entire silent scene and grew uneasy. He didn't like whatever connection they were forming. Whether or not Giggles was the Ruhs' murderer, he wasn't the type of guy he wanted his partner anywhere near.

He cleared his throat and said, "You know, we didn't stop by for the lunch hour social, Mr. Giggles." He fought back the automatic shiver that came with the namesake and attempted to steer his prey's eyes toward him.

Reluctantly, Giggles turned his head toward the young agent and smiled. "No, you're right. I was just trying to be hospitable, but perhaps we can save that for another visit."

"Sure, whatever," Booth said dismissively. He didn't like the uncanny skill Giggles had to drive the conversation in the direction he wanted it to go. The fact that he had a response to everything made it very difficult to identify his weak points.

Booth decided that with a man this cunning the best tactic was to cut straight to the point. "How do you know Clarimonde and Hannelore Ruh?"

Whatever else Hubert Giggles was, he was not surprised or startled. He popped an eyebrow and studied the agent carefully. "I know these women?" He didn't seem to be baiting; he seemed honestly intrigued.

"Well enough to call their house nearly every night."

He didn't say anything for a moment, just stared off into space, his teacup hovering beneath his lip, as though he were savoring the aroma like a connoisseur. At last, he offered a gentle smile to the both of them. "I did this recently?"

"No, it would have been four years ago."

Giggles tilted his head to the right. "Wait, are you—are you being serious?"

"Deathly," Booth added dryly. Giggles looked back at Brennan for confirmation, but her partner was not allowing any more silent transcripts between them. "Clarimonde and Hannelore Ruh." Each word viciously punched the stale living room air.

"If I may make an ironic observation," he began evenly. Neither agent nor scientist said anything, but they hoped this was the break for which they were looking. "Without coming across as too morbid, I would note that Ruh, in German, means 'rest.' And I presume they are indeed at rest, which is why you're knocking on my door? Am I under some sort of suspicion here, because I'm not sure what I've done to warrant this attention." A tremor wormed its way into his voice—he suddenly seemed uneasy, or maybe that's what he wanted them to think, Brennan thought.

While Booth looked disgusted, she looked annoyed. "Everyone will be 'at rest' at some point or another," she quipped. "It's really not that ironic. What is ironic is that you made eighteen phone calls to their house while they were alive and not one after, and yet you don't remember talking to them or even remember their names. How is that possible?"

The addition of her voice seemed to hearten Giggles somewhat, and he found his initial calmness. "A woman after my own heart. You have quite a quick mouth on you, Dr. Brennan. I find you very intellectually stimulating." He pursed his lips at his statements, seeming to second-guess saying them aloud, and he immediately reverted to the concerned, mild-manned citizen.

"You mind keeping the conversation on the topic at hand, Hugh, and answer the lady's question?" Booth barked angrily.

Giggles sighed. "I've never heard of these women until today."

"Then how do you explain the late night phone calls?"

Giggles mused over this for a minute, actually going so far as to put his cup down. His foot thumped rhythmically over his knee. "I suppose they could have been Jenna's friends."

Suddenly, a pit formed in Brennan's stomach. She had focused so hard on this man that she hadn't allowed room for explanations. He had to have been the one to make the calls—he had no children, no wife. It couldn't be true; surely this Jenna was a creation of some recess of his sick mind.

"And who might Jenna be?" Booth prodded.

"She was a runaway I housed for a while several years back."

"And does she have a last name?" the agent asked, his pen poised over the pad of paper he had produced from his jacket pocket.

Giggles pursed his lips and offered that irritating soft smile. "You know, I'm not sure she ever told me, and I don't believe I asked." Booth snorted, but Giggles hardly seemed to care as he had decided Brennan would be a more sympathetic audience. "Ours was a tenuous relationship at best.

"I met Jenna at the soup kitchen I work at in Anacostia, though I assume you two already know that. She had run away from home, somewhere in Delaware, I think she once said, though that could have easily been a lie. Abusive family and whatnot. After living on and off in the street, she had resorted to prostitution, and it was then she took me up on my offer to stay here."

"You in the habit of luring misguided girls into your house, Hugh?" Booth goaded.

"I was a mentor, nothing more," he replied still evenly, a fact which was really starting to weasel its way under Booth's skin.

"How old was Jenna?" Brennan asked.

"At the time? Sixteen, I believe. I tried to get her to settle down and work out some sort of real life for herself, but she refused. Of course, I couldn't get her into a high school either, unless she was looking to score some easy drugs."

"Where is she now?"

"Long gone. She disappeared three and a half years ago. I came home from work one day, and all of her belongings were gone."

Booth finished eagerly scribbling his notes. Three and a half years ago she disappeared. It couldn't be a coincidence, but how did it fit in? "How do we know this Jenna isn't someone you just invented to throw suspicion off of yourself, Hugh? You can't even give us a last name."

Again Giggles released a weary sigh. He took one last sip of his tea before disappearing out of the parlor. Booth and Brennan caught each other's gazes and held them. It was obvious they were both bewildered and frustrated, but they could only hope their suspect might come back with something that would break the case wide open.

Instead, he returned with something that cinched it more tightly shut. He produced a glossy four-by-six picture of two people: the same smile-wearing Hubert Giggles and a lovely but haunted young girl; it was digitally dated May 18, 2002.

Jenna should have looked high school-age, with her bleached-blonde hair streaked with blue and her studded ears, but instead the anthropologist in Brennan noted her emaciated body, sallow skin, protruding clavicles and hunched back—conditions that suggested poor nutrition, repeated prolonged exposure to the elements and heavy stress from negative stimulants.

"You can keep it," he said nonchalantly as he regained his seat. This time, he chose a cookie from the tray next to his teapot. "I have dozens more."

Booth nodded solemnly. "I appreciate that, Hugh. For now, is there anything else you can tell us about the Ruhs?"

Giggles clucked his tongue against his teeth and furrowed his brow sympathetically. "I can only tell you what Jenna told me, and that's not much—it's everything I just told you. I am very sorry I can't be of more help."

"You're not lying to me, are you, Hugh? Because the penalty for lying to an FBI agent is five years in prison."

"And the penalty for lying to an forensic anthropologist is that no one ever finds and identifies your remains."

"Bones," Booth whispered threateningly, and she watched him shake his head almost imperceptibly.

But Giggles merely laughed and smiled amicably. "You go for the truth, Dr. Brennan. I _like_ that, I respect that. It reminds me of me."

There was a nasty retort on the tip of Brennan's tongue, but she caught the image of a very stern Booth in the corner of her eye, and she decided against opening her mouth. It was hard work, yes, but she understood the need for Giggles to be an ally at this stage in the investigation, and for whatever reason she couldn't fathom, Giggles had formed an attachment to her.

"We'll be in touch," Booth said ominously as he handed the man a business card, then he steered his partner out the door.

"Oh, Dr. Brennan," Giggles called out as the partners showed themselves out. She turned to find him with his teacup in hand again. His eyes were luminous in the dull light of the room. "You must be very good at what you do for the FBI to have recruited you."

Brennan lingered in the door frame long enough to say, "The best." She watched Giggles' face for some sort of worry or fear to cross it, but she was uncovered no such thing. In fact, he looked amused, maybe even pleased.

Outside the house on Branch, Booth was losing his patience already; he knew it would come sooner or later, but he wasn't prepared for the immediacy of the attack. The second the front door closed, Brennan mounted an all-out onslaught as to why Giggles was the murderer. Booth knew he was in for a long day when the phrase "anthropologically speaking" crept into her assessment of the suspect.

"Well, did you see any butcher knives or ball peen hammers, medical books or, I don't know, a cage full or hungry rats?" he said, straining to keep his voice level.

"No, but—"

"And I suppose you just want me to dismiss the fact that Fine has three out of four of those things, _and_ his daughter runs a pet store that sells, guess what, rats? He lived right across the street from the damned park, Bones! He has Clarimonde's blood on his wall! What do you need? A road map?"

Brennan sucked in her right cheek as she would sometimes do when she was really adamant about something. "Giggles is the murderer, Booth."

"I'll grant you the guy's guilty of something, but you can't just assume it's brutally murdering two women he doesn't even seem to know."

She shook her head. "He's the murderer."

They walked down the steps in silence as Booth tried to find some way to convince her there were other possibilities. At the car, he opened the door for her, a gesture that was received coldly with a blank stare ahead—he didn't need a squint to tell him what that body language meant.

Once he took his seat, he rested his hands on the steering wheel. After a minute of absolute silence, he said calmly, "We don't have any hard evidence yet, Bones. Fine had means, motive and opportunity, none of which that Chucklehead had. It doesn't make sense for Giggles to randomly murder two complete strangers when he could have just killed a girl with no one to search for her."

"You mean Jenna." Booth nodded. "She is missing," she reminded him.

"A runaway once, a runaway a hundred times."

"You're giving that man all the excuses in the world! You know, he wasn't nervous at all when we were in there, and you gave him no good reason to be."

Finally, Booth was fed up. "What do you want me to do, Bones? Arrest him under what charge? Creepy Last Name, Section 508? There is nothing to go on."

"Yet," she finished. He sighed exasperatedly. Brennan gave herself a moment to steady her rampaging heart before she continued. "I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I'm not looking at the evidence."

Booth was absolutely flabbergasted. "And I can't believe I'm going to say this, but you need to keep an open mind here. We have to explore all possibilities, particularly the most logical one, which is Grant Fine. I have to go where the evidence is leading me, Bones, and as much as you want it to be Giggles, that's not going to make it him."

He looked at her, and he thought he caught the glimmers of fresh tears in her eyes, but she turned away from him. She stared up at the house on the hill and clenched her jaw. "For once I feel it in my gut, Booth. Hubert Giggles killed the Ruhs, maybe Jenna. Can't you trust me? I accept with your 'feelings' and 'intuitions'; I follow your cop instincts. Isn't it my turn for the same consideration? Isn't it?"

He could hear her voice crack, and he felt like such a hard-headed fool. He could still conduct a full investigation on Fine, but Brennan was right—Giggles did warrant extra looking into, and he was willing to dig as deep as he needed to go to find her answers. This wasn't about finding justice for the Ruhs anymore; it was about finding justice for Temperance Brennan.

Booth shifted the car into drive. "I'm taking you back to the Jeffersonian. If you want me to look into Giggles, you have to let me do some legwork, okay? And allow me to continue looking into Fine. You work in the lab, do your haruspex voodoo or whatever. We'll come up with the right conclusion together."

"Science, Booth," she said with a slight smile, wiping the corner of her eye discreetly. "It's called science."

Back at the lab, Brennan had her team working harder than ever. Angela and Hodgins were comparing trace from the skeleton to known soil and fauna samples from the Hillcrest area, while Zack reexamined the remains at Brennan's instance.

"Dr. Brennan," he said once she had given him the task, "I think we've exhausted all the clues from this skeleton that we can. Without more leads, I don't see what else we can find."

"No, one question still remains. How did the killer remove the heads from the bodies without severing their spinal columns?" She pointed with her gloved pinky finger to the perfect condition of the top vertebrae. "Why would he switch the heads? What doesn't he want us to know?" Zack nodded, but she could sense that he disagreed with her tedious order.

Brennan's cell phone buzzed against her hip, and she snapped it open without looking at the caller ID. "Hello," she barked. She realized she was still in a foul mood from her argument with Booth, and when she thought about it, she worried it was David on the other end of the line. She didn't want to send him heading for the hills like she had just sent her partner.

Instead, a soft hum greeted her. She heard nothing but some indistinct buzzing. "Hello? Brennan," she said again, this time softening her tone.

There was another moment of silence before a calm, distinguished voice filled her ear. "Dr. Brennan? So this _is_ your number."

She lowered her voice and headed toward her office. She had a feeling she would want to be alone for this phone call. "Who is this?" she demanded.

"Oh, I'm sorry. How rude of me. Dr. Brennan, this is Hubert Giggles."

She wanted to gasp, but she choked it down at the last second and replied evenly, "How did you get this number?"

For the moment, he chose to ignore her query and instead pressed on with the matter about which he'd called. "Since Agent Booth and you left, I've done nothing but think on Jenna and the Ruh women. I've been going over that time in my life again, and I've come up with some pretty startling information. It's too sensitive to discuss over the phone. Perhaps…" He waited. She could almost see the hook he was dangling in front of her, baited with the most tempting of morsels. "Perhaps we could meet? Discuss this over dinner."

Brennan's intuition screamed for her to say no, to call Booth and for them to meet Giggles on their own turf at FBI headquarters, but then she remembered the way the agent had ignored her hunch for his own. She didn't want any more combat over the situation, especially since they had reached such a tenuous solution; she would look into Giggles as he looked into Fine. One way or another, they would catch the killer.

The words spilled out of her mouth so fast, she barely heard her own response. "Primi Piatti's. I Street. Be there in two hours."

She could practically hear the man grinning. "Delightful! I love Italian. Shall I make us a reservation? For three, assuming Agent Booth will be joining our little information session."

Oh, Giggles was clever. He was sizing up the enemy, searching for and exploiting weaknesses. She could feel his icy digits caressing her skin, probing and prodding and measuring her up.

She thought it wise to reveal nothing of their falling out so as to give him nothing to manipulate. "Yes, three will be perfect," Brennan said calmly, though she had no intention of telling Booth what she had planned.

She imagined she heard Giggles' lips purse—in disappointment perhaps? "Until then, my fair doctor."

Brennan did not say goodbye, but unceremoniously hung up. Even with her phone tucked away and the voice of her suspect no longer purring in her ear, the anthropologist remained unsettled. She should have felt like she had scored some sort of victory, misleading the illusionist and setting up the battlefield her way, but she could not shake the feelings of false confidence and impending disaster. The fly in the spider web.


	9. Nine Letters

_**Author's Note**__: Surprise! This story is not dead! I apologize for the very long delay in this next chapter, but I started teaching and the first year is always the most work—you have to make most of your materials yourself. Not that any of you want to hear my sob story, but I wanted to thank you for keeping this story on alert and letting me know you still care._

_I hope the length of this chapter makes up for its long absence; this is the longest chapter so far, and it's absolutely chock full of surprises. We're winding down, folks—only a chapter and an epilogue away from the end! Hard to believe, I know. I haven't ever finished a story of this magnitude, and so I'm so pleased to have had a chance to share this process with you. If you need to, feel free to reread the previous chapters. I've updated 1 through 4, with the rest to follow suit shortly._

_A quick note—this chapter deals with some pretty dark stuff, as will the following chapter, so please read responsibly. This is not stuff for young kids. Consider this your TV-M warning. Enjoy!_

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**Nine Letters**

The restaurant was darker than she remembered. Brennan had been to Primi Piatti with David once before, but her memories of it as a bright and busy place were colored by her company at the time; now her choice felt more like a mistake than a strategic victory.

The dining room stretched languidly back for what seemed like miles and mirrors along the walls only magnified the enormity of the place. Four other occupied tables were in eyesight, but the lights were dimmed and inky shadows cobwebbed in the corners, none of which helped her encroaching feeling of solitude. Though the hostess had seated her in the lounge by one of the two big front windows overlooking a stretch of I Street, the umbrellas of the café tables outside obscured her table from most casual views. She felt isolated and silly.

Brennan realized too late that her impromptu lunch date was more reckless than she had imagined, especially since she had carefully withheld the secret from Booth. Initially, she believed she could handle Giggles, but such positive thoughts evaporated when she saw his willowy frame in the door.

He smiled cheerily and pointed enthusiastically toward Brennan when the hostess approached him. He was so excited to see her, a fact that made Brennan's skin tingle as though she had dermestid beetles crawling all over her. Still, she forced the corners of her mouth into a stiff, awkward smile as he took the seat across from her.

He was dressed in another freshly starched shirt, this time blue with a gold silk tie flawlessly knotted. His hair was combed softly over to the right side, one stray lock drooping dangerously toward his right eye as though he had wanted to craft an edgier side to Hubert Giggles. He sat stiff-backed in the chair and peered at her generously. "Gosh, it's a lovely day outside," he began happily. "Where's Agent Booth? Am I early?"

Brennan shook her head. "He had to follow up on some leads. He told me I should wait for him, but I don't think this will take long. I took the liberty of getting us the best table," she said, hoping he wasn't wise enough to translate 'best' as 'safest.'

Satisfied with her answers, he opened his menu and perused with gusto. "I don't know about you, but I'm hankering for some Bolognese."

"Actually, Mr. Giggles, I'm not that hungry. I was more interested in what you've uncovered regarding the Ruhs."

Giggles looked up from his menu, but not at her. His eyes strayed to the striped columns that lined the walls. "Beautiful atmosphere here," he said as he ignored her question and her penetrating gaze. "Reminds me of ancient Rome. Perhaps if we had met in those times, it would be quite a different story. The haruspex and the philosopher sharing dinner in the piazza."

Brennan leaned forward, her elbows resting on the table. She was intensely curious about him, like this man was the key to all of her anthropological questions. "Is that how you see yourself, as a philosopher amidst the commoners?"

"I suppose I only chose that word because they were so romanticized in that period, but yes, I do see myself as a thoughtful, sensitive man. And indeed I am a romantic, Dr. Brennan. I believe the right woman is out there for me, waiting to wander into my life." His gaze lingered on her fingers, then traveled up her slender wrist and arm, paused again at the curve of her neck, before finally settling into an intense examination of her face.

"Good luck with that," she said skeptically.

"You don't believe in love?"

"Not in its abstract, poetic sense, no." Giggles quirked an eyebrow, so she continued, "I believe humans form bonds to each other out of shared experiences, interests and associations—"

"If that's the case, then we're on our way to being a perfect match, right? We're sharing one of hopefully many experiences right now, and we met through similar interests."

Brennan frowned but refused to let herself by bullied by the man's brazen words. "You misunderstand me, Mr. Giggles. As an anthropologist, I recognize the necessity of sexual relations and primal desire for intimate connections with others of our species to perpetuate the human race. If you choose to label certain stronger bonds with the word 'love,' that's your prerogative."

After a moment, Giggles smiled. "Allow me to be frank with you, Temperance." Hearing him say her name was a shock, but she had no time for reply, for he persisted: "You fascinate me. Watching you work and think, it's intriguing. I would like to get to know you better."

"Are you trying to hit on me, _Mr_. Giggles?" she said quite deadpan and hoped he would not call her Temperance again.

"Merely telling you how I feel. If you choose to label it with those words," he teased, "that's your prerogative."

"Well, I don't date murder suspects."

The playful look in his eyes was arrested at once, and Brennan had the keen sense that Giggles knew about David. Of course, there was no way he could know, but something in his air spoke otherwise. Finally, he said, "Shall we order something from the wine cellar? I warn you, I have very expensive taste, but I'm willing to foot the bill when the company is so exquisite."

"I don't mean to be rude—"

"Then don't be," he said with flash of irritation. Immediately, his cool, soft gaze returned, but Brennan was unsettled, and he could tell. "I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me. I just thought we were sharing such a lovely moment, and I guess I didn't want to ruin it."

The waitress came for their orders, and while Brennan ordered only a salad and water, while Giggles ordered veal shank and an expensive bottle of wine in the hopes that she would partake.

With the waitress gone, the unease returned. Brennan, though never particularly strong with word or mind games but a pro at analyzing the shifts of power in a microcosm, knew she had a chance to get the information she desired, or else Giggles would get nothing further from her. He had to earn back her trust, and the only way to do it was to answer her questions. Sometimes it paid to be an anthropologist.

"I take no offense because I didn't come here for a date," she said. "I am here for the information you promised me."

Giggles sighed lightly but smiled handsomely in defeat. "And we humans are nothing if we don't keep our promises, I agree. Very well, you have bested me, haruspex. I shall tell you all I know.

"I recall one cold winter day several years back, when Jenna was still living with me. She came home from school—what little of it she actually attended—and told me she had made a new friend. I don't remember the girl's name, but now that I think about it, it was probably the Ruh child."

"Hanna," she interrupted.

"Yes," he said unconcernedly. "Truthfully, I don't think I paid much attention to this because Jenna had had many 'friends' whom she never mentioned again. But later that month, when I opened my phone bill, I found a series of calls to a number I didn't recognize. I was concerned because I hadn't made them and Jenna was jittery and avoidant. I figured the number was her drug dealer or supplier, so I gave it a ring that night.

"I was surprised when a young girl answered, but that didn't allay my suspicions any because even the sweetest voice can hide… indiscretions."

The sharp tone with which he said this belied his calm demeanor and piqued Brennan's interest. The anthropologist within her took hold, and she began to form a research outline based on her impressions. On the small notepad she kept she jotted down "Resentment of female culture? Stereotyping. Word choice, 'sweetest voice,' 'indiscretions.'"

All the while, the man continued without the slightest curiosity toward what she may be writing. "When I asked her about Jenna, she hesitated to tell me she knew her, but with a little insistence and the right bit of leverage, she admitted their acquaintance."

"Leverage?"

"Late night phone calls on the family line isn't something I appreciated as a parent, and I assumed neither would Hanna's parents." He paused as the food came, leaving Brennan time enough to survey him.

His hungry eyes were fixed on his entrée, his head bowed piously over it as though he were giving thanks. He laid his napkin across his lap and reached for his wine glass. And that was when she first noticed them—the burns. They weren't terribly disfiguring or noticeable, but the index and middle fingers on his right hand were missing their most of their prints. On the index finger remained only a small crescent of unscarred skin. She hadn't noticed them at his house because he'd held the teacup the entire time, but now they were all she could look at.

"How did you get those burns?" she asked frankly. "They look like third degree burns, and they're on your dominant hand. Reached for something too hot to handle?" Brennan smiled at her own cleverness and wished desperately Booth, Angela and Hodgins, her main humor critics, were there to witness it; she liked coming across as witty to a suspect, but she'd have liked it even more if she could flaunt it to her coworkers.

But surprisingly her guest didn't seem to find the humor in it. Giggles' right eye twitched, but he displayed no other emotion. "You're awfully blunt, Temperance."

"If you insist on calling me by a name I gave you no permission to use, I'll see myself out of this restaurant."

"Fair enough," he said, "but can't this topic of conversation wait until after we've finished our meals? I have no intention of ruining your appetite with my… shall we say, unpleasantness."

"If he only knew his whole presence was unpleasant," Brennan thought bitterly but said nothing in reply. This seemed to please the murder suspect as the corners of his mouth twitched softly.

"Perhaps we can talk of more civilized things."

"I'm used to gore, violence, death and disfiguration. You can't disgust me, Mr. Giggles."

A spark ignited in his depthless brown eyes. "My, you _are _quite the conundrum. Now who's hitting on whom?"

Brennan silently fumed as she angrily forked salad into her mouth. Every time she thought she got a leg up, he knocked her back down. This meeting was headed nowhere she had intended; she now knew definitively why Booth always insisted on doing the interrogations. In retrospect, it was obvious Giggles had merely called her to seduce her or whatever other delusions his mind held, but dense old Temperance Brennan was so blinded by her desires to solve this case that she had missed the hints. Now she was stuck across the table from a maniac who had more witty retorts than she had bones in her archive. It was infuriating to feel so incompetent.

To make matters worse, Brennan's cell phone buzzed noisily against her hip. Annoyed, she swatted at it to silence it, but Giggles said, "Go ahead and answer it. I'll still be here when you're finished."

Her eyes remained fixed on him as she fumbled with her belt clip. The phone snapped into her hand, and though unwilling to take her eyes off of him, she glanced quickly at the caller ID. It was David. Her annoyance at the interruption only increased. David had been calling her a lot since this case started, and although the tiny reservoir of romance that lurked within her wanted to define it as general concern, instead she perceived it as a personal attack. Why couldn't the men in her life just leave her alone for a few minutes to sort things out?

Giggles popped up an eyebrow. "Agent Booth?"

"If it were Booth, I would have answered," she said curtly.

"He could be calling from another line?"

"He's not." And that was all the further she was willing to let this conversation progress. She could tell by the smug look on his face that Giggles knew who had called, maybe not the caller's name, but the caller's significance—yes, he knew that beyond a doubt. Brennan chastised herself for even acknowledging the ring. "Are we going to talk about your burns?"

Giggles took one last bite of his veal and dabbed at his lips with his napkin. He folded his silverware neatly across his plate and pushed it gently to his left. His eyes met hers for a long moment, and Brennan was reminded of the eyes of large predator. She knew the basics of what he desired, but he allowed her in no further to see what really drove him. Their gaze lasted so long, Brennan's eyes burned and tears pricked in the corners, but she would not back down from the challenge.

At last, the man said, "If you'll excuse me for one moment, Dr. Brennan." With that, he disappeared toward the restrooms, and Brennan thought she could breathe freely for the first time that day.

In her moment of peace, she pondered calling Booth, but as her fingers traveled across the cool surface of her phone, she thought better of it. As little as she had gleaned thus far, there was still the potential to uncover something of value from her silver-tongued opponent, and the only way she could do that was on her own. Brennan had been blunt, insensitive and calculating, and still Giggles attempted to court her. And with eerie suddenness, she knew why.

The two of them were the same.

Maybe they didn't have the same intentions, and they definitely weren't on the same sides of the moral laws that governed their society, but Brennan shared a unique similarity with Hubert Giggles. Intellectually, they were both brilliant, but what connected them deeper than she cared to acknowledge was their search for truth, though what truths he sought still eluded her. While they aspired toward different things, their drive was the same, and borne from that was an unholy communion, a trust as vile and sacred as a pact between God and Satan might be. Brennan had no choice but to respect its tentative hold on her and hope she could manipulate it to her advantage.

At last, Giggles returned from the restroom and resumed his attentions, only this time he watched her gravely. "I will tell you my story on the condition that you let me call you by your given name."

Brennan scowled at the language. "Given name," not "first name." He was asking her to hand over a part of herself to him. She had to admit after years of being called only by her last name or Bones, her first name held an eerie power, and Giggles wielded it as skillfully as a chef wields a knife.

Not one to be out-maneuvered, however, she offered, "As long as you recognize that when you call me Temperance, I'm going to treat it as though you just called me Dr. Brennan."

Giggles sucked a ragged breath through his pearly teeth. "Tut-tut, Temperance. You are no fun, but I guess I have no control over what you think… yet."

Maybe it was meant as a sort of conversational foreplay, something to tease a response from lips, but the anthropologist only heard an ominous tone and war drums signaling a challenge.

For the first time during the lunch Brennan truly regretted not telling Booth where she'd be. When she thought about it, she wasn't sure exactly how she ended up where she was. She and Booth and been inseparable as partners—everything they had done, they'd done together. Ironically she had been the one to insist upon it from the first day they had become reluctant allies.

But what was she doing sitting here alone with a suspected killer, and at that, a suspected killer with whom she had a kinship? It was dangerous and stupid, just downright stupid, and not at all like the Temperance Brennan she had envisioned herself to be. She had let her emotions and pride get the better of her yet again, and she feared this was becoming a noisome habit. But the "proof was in the pudding," as Hodgins would say, and there was no denying the desperate situation she was in now. Sitting straight-backed across from the impeccable philosopher, Brennan quirked an eyebrow as she remembered something he had said.

At the time, she hadn't really invested any thought into the fact that she would have answered the phone if it had been Booth—she would have instantly. What suddenly troubled her—now looking into the pervasive eyes of Hubert Giggles—was that even though she knew it was David who had called, she had no interest in answering, and it had nothing to do with the fact that she was interviewing a suspect.

She tried to rationalize her decision simply as one man was her partner who needed to be involved with the case while the other man would simply want to plan a date or chat idly. Still, the conclusion didn't sit right in her stomach much the way Grant Fine hadn't filled the mold of killer for her.

"Something on your mind, Temperance?" Giggles astutely asked, and Brennan stifled a hiss. She was ready for this lunch to be over, but she hadn't gotten what she'd come for, and she'd be damned if she'd let the man walk away with the answers she sought.

"You haven't answered my question. I've agreed to your deal, Mr. Giggles, but you haven't held up your end of the bargain."

He chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment and folded his hands on his lap, safely away from her keen eyes. "Warehouse fire."

Brennan waited for details, but he offered none. She let her frustration pour out, regardless of how vulnerable it could make her look. "A warehouse fire? That's all you've got for me after making me wait for you?"

"Aw, Temperance, you'll make me blush. To think you waited for me."

It took all of her energy to resist slamming her hands against the table; keeping her composure was the only thing she could actively control here. Instead, she rested both palms flat against the cool, white tablecloth and stared stiffly at Giggles. "This meeting is over," she said and proceeded to stand up. She angrily gathered her things, dropped some money on the table for the bill and headed toward the door; however, she didn't get far before a contrite Hubert called after her:

"I'm sorry. Sometimes I get carried away in playful banter, a hold over from the biting wit of the Roman forums I so adore. I didn't mean to treat the topic so lightly. If you want to know about the fire, I will tell you."

Against her desires, Brennan said nothing. She had to stand by her conviction or he would forever tug her along as he pleased. She didn't want him to grant her permission for two minutes, she wanted him to offer things freely. No more dancing, no more puppeteering. Her indifference spoke volumes. Giggles nudged out her seat, but she declined to take it. She needed him to know she was not his plaything anymore.

Surprisingly, he obliged. "Several years ago, I was cleaning out a storage locker I rented. At that time, I'm ashamed to say, I was still nurturing the rather repugnant habit of smoking, and I grew momentarily careless in my frenetic cleaning. I knocked the cigarette into a pile of trash I had accumulated, and before I knew it, and I singed more than a little flesh from my fingers."

She found it hard to believe that this tidy, perfectly kempt man would ever think of damaging his body through such a corrosive vice like smoking, but she had no evidence to back up this feeling, only a collection of observations and the strange, cold worms of thought that squirmed on her mind.

He continued, "Luckily, I managed to put out the blaze, and I've largely forgotten about the hindrance. That is, until you mentioned it." Brennan could tell he meant it as a sly joke, a hopeful jab that she might feel a twang of guilt for broaching the subject. She felt nothing of the sort.

Instead, she jotted down some notes on what he had said, but when she looked up, she noticed the devilish man was grinning. "You enjoy being the number one suspect in a murder case?" she asked incredulously.

"I enjoy spending time with you," he answered. Disgusted, Brennan headed for the door; it was the only way she could think to gain control of the situation once again. Giggles stared open-mouthed at her back for a moment, then said, "You can't just leave me here, haruspex."

There was an unexpected note of distress in his voice that stopped Brennan in her tracks. She stopped by the door, her hand resting against the cool brass of the door push plate. "Too bad. Take your chariot home," she goaded before exiting the restaurant.

The air outside was warm and welcoming, as she felt like she'd spent a lifetime inside the cavernous belly of Primi Piatti's. She didn't think she could ever eat there again, not without instantly losing her appetite.

She unholstered her cell phone and readied to make the inevitably long and quarrelsome call to her partner when she noticed she had a voicemail from David. She planned to listen to it later when she had more patience and was in a forgiving sort of mood, but then she decided that it might be urgent so she dialed into her mailbox.

"Hey, Tempe," he said demurely, "I know you're really busy with this case, but if you find a few free minutes, give me a call, okay? I get worried when you're this zealous over a case. Take some time to wind down and beep me. You know the number."

Something about the message irked her, though she couldn't place her finger on it. He sounded caring and worried, but the words were all wrong. Zealous? She wasn't zealous, she was determined. She was going to catch Hubert Giggles in a net of his own broken lies and make sure he was thrown away forever. For David to call her a zealot, well, it pretty much just pissed her off. Maybe she was over-reacting, but Brennan was in no mood to deal with his neediness. She closed the phone and decided against calling either of the men in her life. It was time to get back to the lab and start piecing together the puzzle.

With her phone safely back by her waist, Brennan took three steps forward when the restaurant bell jangled behind her. An odd impulse rushed through her, the urge to look at her shadow. She noticed another shadow had joined hers. A black hand reached forward to caress the silhouette of her head and face. One spindly, ebony finger traced the forehead, down the nose to the chin, and dawdled as it stroked her neck. The shadow melted with hers, a dark and unwelcome union, as invasive as rape.

A rush of goose bumps overtook her skin and pulled it taut. Brennan tried to calm herself, insisting she could easily overtake the man behind her should he attempt anything, but her sympathetic nervous system would not listen and the goose bumps persisted.

The scientist in her knew this was an implication of the fight-or-flight response. The neurons located in the locus ceruleus portion of her brain—the part that responds to stress and panic—were firing at a surprising rate, keeping her attentive to her surroundings and relaying messages to other parts of her body to prepare to stay and fight or run and hide. Her autonomic nervous system was sending messages to increase adrenaline flow should she need the extra energy. As comforting as the science was in this instance, Brennan remained embarrassed by her body's reaction; she wasn't being directly attacked or threatened, but the lingering sensation of the wrongness of the act, the sinister desire in those phantom touches kept her eyes wide and her heart racing.

When at last she felt she had control of her body and she had determined she would not run, Brennan turned to her assaulter. Of course it was Hubert Giggles. He smiled at her as though he had done nothing wrong. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" she demanded furiously.

Even Giggles could tell she wasn't playing from the tone in her voice and the stiffness of her body. His eyes adopted that strange predatory glow, like the eyes of lions hunting on the blackened savannah. "A very cold greeting," he said. His voice was laced with a deep bass, an unearthly sort of growl that made Brennan's skin prickle all over again. "Not what I would expect from soul so akin to mine."

She could no longer stand the flirting and double entendres. She didn't care if she alienated the man now, forgoing all hope of a confession, as long as she could rid herself of his presence. Brennan decided to put an end to this now. "Make no mistake, Mr. Giggles, the only reason why I agreed to lunch with you in the first place was to pump your for information on the Ruhs' murders. I take absolutely no pleasure in your company."

There was a moment of silence where she couldn't decide whether the man would attack her or laugh at her. In the end, though, he did neither. He raised his hand and moved it in a strange up-and-down motion. At first, she didn't understand what he was doing, but then she saw her shadow and noticed that he was stroking her head. She shook her head violently to ruin his image. She realized it was a childish reaction, but it seemed enough to jar him from his eerie fantasies.

"I will call you again, Temperance," he said, and before she could debate it, he abruptly turned and walked down the sidewalk. Brennan watched him uneasily, afraid that he would suddenly turn around and harass her some more. Eventually, he disappeared around a street corner three blocks down and did not reappear. Brennan didn't think she'd ever look at her shadow the same way again.

Standing there alone on that shady stretch of street tickled the memories at the back of her mind, and against her will, she was transported back in time, back to a day she had tried desperately to bury, a day that forever changed the course of her life.

-----

_Her body moved of its own accord; her feet were vile traitors that marched ever closer to the piteous crying behind the walls of Mr. Arkem's house. Temperance's mouth was fixed in a stiff line, but her brow betrayed her as it furrowed with trepidation. She passed through the unkempt emerald arch of brambles that heralded No Man's Land, the bag of food snagging on the wicked thorns. The harsh crinkle of the plastic sent her heart into a terrific flutter, but even then Temperance held her composure. She dropped the bag in the arch and tentatively took three more steps. The soft scrape of her shoes on the buckling concrete rattled her nerves, but she paid them little mind when she saw the disquieting scene before her. _

_With the last step, she emerged through the greenery into a realm she could never have imagined. Temperance had believed the house to be in disrepair, but she would never have thought it would be the shack that it was. Whole lengths of siding peeled back from the house with evident revulsion, curling in haphazard piles in the tall grasses carpeting the lawn. Two large beams of wood had been hastily leaned against the front wall, barely reinforcing it. Shutters dangled from their hinges and the molding above the front door slanted downward like an angry eyebrow. Even the steady Temperance Brennan was paralyzed with fear by the sinister building._

_As much as her mind struggled to lead her away to safety, the pitiful mewling of an unseen prisoner lured her ever deeper into this wild, shadowy kingdom. She gingerly side-stepped a rusty tricycle in the middle of the walkway and artfully dodged a low-hanging tree branch above her. Quietly as she could, Temperance approached what had once been a front porch; now it was nothing more than saw-toothed maw that gaped hungrily and threatened to collapse on top of her. It was from this dark recess that the desperate whimpers emanated._

_Temperance ducked under the uneven shingles and let her eyes adjust to the cool depths of the shadows. In these moments of blindness, she relied on her other senses to balance her. She felt the stale, tight air encircle her limbs and squeeze the strength from them; she heard the soft cries and labored breathing of the lonely creature; and she smelled for the first time the putrid reek of decay. All the young Brennan knew was that something was terribly wrong here._

_Gradually, after a horrifying wait alone with that cloying odor and wretched whimpering, the top veil of shadows lifted, and Temperance could not hold in the gasp as murky, formless blobs revealed their true forms as skeletonized animals, rotting carcasses and brutalized house pets. There were dozens of them—dozens—littering the length of the porch, burning their way into her memory. Bones were heaped in large piles all jumbled and indistinct. Temperance ached inside at the thought that these poor things would never be loved by their owners again. Tears burned in the corners of her eyes—a combination of the horrific stink and the sheer magnitude of the cruelty._

_At the end of the killing field was the tiny creature that called out for mercy, a kitten with its back leg so maliciously broken that the bleak white of its bone reflected what little of the sun's rays made it onto the porch. The moment she laid eyes on the unfortunate creature, Temperance felt the blood bubble inside her. The animal was the lone survivor in a sea of carnage. _

_For an eerie instant, she imagined she would find her missing parents in the killing zone, and with that thought, she unleashed the sobs that had been accruing on her soul. The vehemence of her sadness overtook her, and her knees folded underneath her weight. Here she was, a little girl alone in a sea of death and abandoned innocence, and the only comfort she had was a maimed kitten. The gravity of the scene was too much to bear and she hiccoughed violently between desperate breaths. Hearing herself cry, something she never did, only sent Temperance further over the edge, and she was helplessly carried away on a torrent of emotion. _

_But her break down was not without notice; her trembling wails drew the unwanted attention of a stranger._

_Despite the noise of her uncontrollable sobs, the slow groan of the front door easing open instantly grabbed Temperance's attention. Her cries ceased immediately, and her bleary eyes widened in terror. If it were possible, there was even less light inside the shack than on the porch, and the little girl could barely discern the silhouette of human in the crack of the door. The further the door opened, the more she could see of the stranger. _

_He was a plump man, with a belly that ballooned around him like a fatty halo, and he had a very round head, bald on top but ringed with a crown of short salt-and-pepper hair. His nose was bulbous and twitched as he sharply inhaled, but the fact that he didn't recoil from the reek gave Temperance some terrifying insight into his purpose. He had keen blue eyes that found the little girl's, and ripples of flesh gathered around them as he smiled excitedly at her. He took a slow step towards her and then stopped. Head cocked to the right, he studied her much the way he might study a creature he had never seen before._

_Temperance knew this was Mr. Arkem, though she had never seen him in her life. The cool glaze of his eyes, the curious purse of his lips and the rigidity of his neck and shoulders told the young girl that she meant no more to him than these mutilated animals. Still, he said nothing._

_He only broke his gaze when he heard the kitten crying. His eyes glanced toward the end of the porch and he lunged forward as if he were going to grab it. Before she knew what she was doing, Temperance grasped his ankle as tightly as she could and pulled him backwards. Mr. Arkem did not fall or even turn toward her, but he did freeze in his tracks. He seemed to have trouble processing why he wasn't quieting the mewling kitten._

_Temperance's fingers ached from the strain she was putting into holding the villain in place, but she wasn't about to let go. At fifteen, she wasn't yet able to find out who all these pets belonged to and give the owners some answers, but she could stop a killer from savaging one more cat, and she was determined to do just that. If the stand off took all day, she would hold there._

_After what seemed like ages, Mr. Arkem turned to face her. Temperance could never describe the rush of fear that iced her veins and overtook her the minute he turned his blank eyes on her. But even then, she conquered that nagging urge to flee, and she stood up as tall as she could make herself, just as she had seen the elephants due to ward off hungry predators. Bloody splotches soaked through the knees of her jeans, a sickly reminder of where she was. Her hands formed two angry little fists, and she prepped her muscles for retaliation, should he lash out._

_But he did not. Temperance side-stepped her way carefully down the porch, tears washing down her cheeks when she accidentally bumped a corpse or cracked a bone. She made her way to the kitten and, without taking her eyes off of Mr. Arkem, she gently picked up the animal and held it to her chest._

_Without a single word, she backed down the porch and the walkway to the overgrown hedge that marked the end of a nightmare. The kitten was quiet in her arms, perhaps sensing it was out of danger and again loved. Mr. Arkem watched from the shadows as still as a gargoyle looming over the side of a building. He made no move to come after her, did not call out or hurry to clean up the horror he had created. He just waited and watched._

_Once free from the spell of the place, Temperance raced home to tell the Whitmores what happened. One look at the red stains dotting her clothes and the injured kitten in her arms, and the police descended upon the Arkem house with blue fury. No one ever called her and told her that her parents' bodies were in his backyard, but the question would always nag at her._

_Temperance was never told much about what happened to Mr. Arkem. Over the next few days, she caught a few glimpses of the news coverage about his gruesome garden, but the Whitmores did their best to make sure she was as distanced from that scene as possible despite her protests. She wanted to know what happened to the man who had brutalized those innocent creatures and haunted her dreams, but everyone else seemed to think that keeping her from seeing what happened to him would be better in the long run. She couldn't have disagreed more, but who was going to listen to a fifteen year-old adopted girl._

_The cat she rescued that day died shortly after she took it to the animal hospital from an infection caused by its severe wounds. Young Temperance assured herself that no matter what the cost in the future, she would stop other criminals from destroying people's lives and families, and she would somehow or another bring justice to the victims._

-----

When she came out of her memory, Brennan was cold and nauseous, her food from Primi Piatti's now sour in her stomach. She could think of nothing but stained jeans and Hubert Giggles. She saw his lean form stooped over the skeletonized bodies of the two women, red spots covering his hands and clothes. In an instant, she felt as if she'd finally stitched the seams of the case together. She raced back to her car and the Jeffersonian.

When she got back to the lab, Angela Montenegro was waiting for her. The second the forensic pathologist poked her head around the corner, her best friend pounced. "I need to talk with you," she said, grabbing Brennan by the arm and dragging her toward her office.

Once inside, Angela eased the door shut and stared at her friend squarely. "Do you have brain damage or something?"

Brennan narrowed her eyes at the harsh comment. "Not that I know of," she replied tightly.

"Where the hell did you disappear to for hours?"

"Why are you asking? You didn't bother to call."

"And neither did you," Angela retorted. She didn't exactly sound angry, but she was certainly upset. "I figured it was one of your 'I've got to do this alone' things—which, I might add, are popping up with alarming frequency recently—but I was on the verge of calling right when you walked in."

"I was interviewing our prime suspect."

Angela stood there open-mouthed. "You went out with that freakily named Looney Toon without Booth?"

She used her favorite hackneyed phrase: "I can take care of myself." Brennan turned her back stubbornly toward her concerned coworker.

Finally, Angela softened her tone. She realized there was no sense in raising Temperance Brennan's hackles when she had such a specific purpose in mind. "I know you can, sweetie, it's just that most of the bad guys don't. It only takes one lunatic to decide you're worth the trouble of killing, and who knows with this world today."

Brennan rested her hands on her desk. She, too, was on edge after the spooky meeting with Giggles, and she hadn't meant on attacking her best ally and friend. "I don't know how you do it," she began suddenly.

"What?" Angela asked. She took a step closer to Brennan and waited as patiently as she could manage.

"I'm not like you, Angela. I'm not an empathetic person. I look at things critically, logically, distantly. I'm not used to imagining scenarios and envisioning the brutal pictures of death. I don't know how you turn it off once it's on."

Angela approached her friend from behind and put her hands on her shoulders. "I don't really think there's a way."

"I'm afraid…" she began. "I'm afraid that now that I've seen this side of the Ruhs', I won't be able to keep the detachment I need to continue doing this job."

"You will, Tempe. But right now, I think you should embrace it. These horrible visions you have, like them or not, are helping you solve this crime that no one else could. You're the only person out there who could connect these bones to the person who made them that way. And that's going to have the killer nervous. Nervous people make mistakes, and I don't want that mistake to be hurting my best friend.

"I'm sorry I jumped on you. I just want you to be careful, is all."

"Thank you," Brennan said as she turned around and embraced her friend. "I learn so much from you."

"Psh, like what? How to be a sassy, modern romantic? That's nothing to brag about, and you can see how far it's gotten me."

"It is for someone who's completely lost when it comes to all things unrelated to science."

"You'll figure it out eventually." They stood there in a companionable silence for a few minutes until Angela could no longer resist the temptation growing inside her mind. "You know, you really ought to talk to Booth about this."

"That's probably the last thing I want to do, Ange."

"He might be able to help, especially with that romantic part."

Brennan sighed, her shoulders slumping in defeat. No matter how many times she went over this with Angela, she refused to get it in her head that Booth and she were merely partners, not lovers. "I don't think so."

"Oh come on. This could be one of those things you learn from me. Grab life by the horns and ride it for once."

"But Booth? I mean, he's just so—"

"Handsome, daring and defined?" the artist interjected as she batted her eyes at the mere thought of the FBI agent.

"I was going to say annoying, but—"

"But! Now there's a conjunction I can get behind. Yes, let's talk about Booth's 'but.'"

Brennan glared at the horrible pun, and Angela indulged herself with a triumphant grin. "—but now that you mention it, I suppose I have been pretty hot-and-cold toward him throughout this case. We should probably reconcile."

"I hope this reconciliation involves lots of champagne and heavy panting."

"Or a handshake and cuffing a killer."

Angela mused on this for a moment before saying, "Decidedly less arousing than my version, but handcuffs could be fun."

"You're impossible," Brennan shouted, making an angry claw with her right hand.

"I aim to please, babe. I'm glad we had this talk. At least think about what I said about the champagne?"

Brennan silently waved her friend out of the room and hurried to change into her lab jacket. She wanted to follow up on the brainstorm she had outside of Primi Piatti's.

At the examination table, she looked over the remains of Clarimonde Ruh for the umpteenth time. She and her squints had never been able to figure out the reason why the skulls had been switched in the grave, but at last, Brennan thought she understood what had happened. "He couldn't tell them apart," she announced to her waiting team.

Hodgins, Zack and Angela had orbited silently around their boss while she worked as none of them wanted to derail her train of thought. "What do you mean, Dr. Brennan?" Zack asked.

"The killer accidentally switched the skulls. By the time he had buried the bodies, they had already decomposed, and judging from the rat bite marks, rather quickly too. That explains the lack of particulates in the soil," she added to Hodgins in an attempt to make him feel better for not having found anything. "But when he buried the bodies, he wasn't sure whose skull was whose, and he just tossed one in with one body and, I would wager, one in with the other."

Angela frowned and crossed her arms. "That's pretty callous, just tossing a skull into a grave without even bothering to figure out if it was the right one."

"It explains why we never found Hanna's body with hers. The killer thought he'd buried the whole thing elsewhere."

"But I wonder who he was really after," Hodgins said, surprising them all. None of them had thought that one victim might have been more important than the other. They had all assumed that the mother and daughter were taken together because somebody wanted to kill both of them, but if that were the case, it would be likely that they would be buried together, as many cultures did when burying those they didn't care about in mass graves. The Ruhs, however, were buried separately, suggesting one of them had a greater importance than the other, but without Hannelore's body, it was impossible to judge.

Then another idea came to Brennan. "Romeo. Romeo," Brennan mused aloud.

"Where for art thou, Romeo?" Hodgins teased.

Brennan ignored him and continued to stare at the skeleton. Something was tickling the front of her brain, but she just couldn't grab it. "Romeo," she said again, and let it hang.

She thought back on her lunch with Hubert Giggles, his strange mannerisms, his intensity, his love for the past. "A play on words!" she concluded aloud. The other squints stared at her, awaiting an explanation. "Romeo is a play on words. Giggles—"

"Ugh," Angela groaned, "can we _please_ stop saying his name? Can't we call him Suspect G or He Who Should Not Be Named or something? I'm going to have nightmares for a month if this keeps up."

Her best friend ignored her outburst and continued undaunted. "He is fascinated by ancient Rome; he thinks he belongs there. He used a play on words, a combination of who he is and who he wants to be."

"Psychology again, sweetie?" Angela chided.

"Facts. Logical deductions. Circumstantial evidence," she asserted. "If you'd been there for the interview, Angela, you'd—"

"Don't get me started on that," the artist growled. "I still can't believe you did such an outrageous thing. I mean, I've always known you to go a little Dark Knight on us—I know, I know, you don't know what that means—" she added when she saw Brennan's quizzical look, "but I at least thought you'd have the sense to take your FBI beefcake for backup."

Brennan's mouth formed a tight line. "Booth isn't my protector. If he wants to play the hero, he can do it for someone else."

"That's rather harsh," Zack observed, but with the fierce look his boss gave him, he remembered why he'd chosen to be in the background for this round.

"I'm serious."

"When are you not?" Angela quipped.

"I just can't seem to work around him this case. Something's strange, and right now I'd rather just not be around him."

"Is that so?"

Brennan paused and took a quick second to think about it. No, maybe it wasn't, but every ounce of energy she had to expend arguing a stupid point with him was energy that could be directed toward catching Giggles. Booth was a good friend and a reliable partner, but sometimes they just couldn't get the chemistry right between them. For now, they had to remain distant allies before something boiled over.

"Yes," she said finally.

Hodgins swiveled in his chair and looked wide-eyed at the two women. "Angie, are Mommy and Daddy getting a divorce?" he asked in his best child impersonation. Angela laughed, but it was clear the anthropologist had had enough. She turned her back on them, and that's when she saw it.

She would never have seen it if it weren't for the precise angular lighting from a neighboring lamp. She leaned in for a closer inspection, but it was definitely there, a confirmation of everything she had believed, of everything she had worked so hard for, the proof that she had been right and Booth had been wrong. The physical evidence that would catch Hubert Giggles finally materialized.

Brennan wasted no time, not even to chastise herself for missing it in the first place. She left the lab and headed into her office to change back out of her coat, all the while thinking about the man she was hunting.

It had been hours since their lunch, and Brennan worried what Giggles had done in the meantime. She wondered if he'd fled the area, but realized that he probably hadn't felt threatened enough to run from her—intimidation tactics were Booth's job. Instead, she envisioned the killer skulking around outside her house, watching and waiting for her. She wanted to believe it wasn't true, but after their meeting, she couldn't shake the feeling that Giggles had his sights set on her, but as a lover or a victim, she couldn't tell, maybe both. Would she be ready for him the next time they met? So far, every attempt to match wits with him had failed on her part, and now she wasn't so sure. What if he was outside her apartment right now, waiting for her.

As if on cue, her phone chirruped against her hip. It was from the same number as the one Giggles had called from earlier, only this time it was a text message. Hesitantly, she opened it, her mouth fixed in a taut line as the most succulent of baits was laid before her. Her eyes narrowed at the nine letters, cold black on white screen.

"I'm waiting."

But where was Giggles waiting? His house? His job? The Ruhs'? They were all logical places he might return, and they all had significance to this case, but Brennan didn't have time to waste driving around Anacostia in the hopes of stumbling into his wicked trap.

Her mind raced back to their lunch date, to Giggles' knowing eyes and enticing smiles. He was leaving her a trail of bread crumbs and testing her to see if she was worthy of his secrets. Brennan believed in herself enough to know she was, but now she had to prove it to him. She couldn't explain it, but somehow she knew is she could solve this riddle, everything about the Ruhs' disappearances and deaths would be made known to her. But she had to gain his good faith, and, as vile of a thought as it was, she had to impress him.

"Come on, Tempe," she urged herself. "Everything you need is in front of you. It's just like doing a puzzle: start with the easiest pieces and work your way in."

Burns. Fire. Years ago. Warehouse.

She flashed back to her initial opinion of the skeleton. "The victim was probably killed somewhere quiet, private with little or no nearby human activity so her cries wouldn't be heard and the killer could keep tabs on her to make sure she didn't escape." What better place for a heinous murder? Still, the FBI hadn't turned up his name on any other properties than his house, and no rented storage, that was for sure.

Brennan shook her head in frustration. She knew Giggles, and as disgusted as she was at this, it didn't change the fact that she knew the man to be a deceiver, not some simplistic liar. The difference was, where another killer would lie to cover up the truth, Giggles flaunted his deceptions and encouraged those clever enough to unravel them. He misled, he tricked, he schemed, but he did not lie. No, the warehouse was real enough, but how to find it?

Suddenly, a thought came to her. She turned on her monitor, brought up a reverse phone number service and typed the number from the text message into it. She pressed enter and waited for the site to process the numbers. In truth, Brennan didn't hold out much hope that the search would come up with anything—at the very least, she would know if it was a private number, and if so, she would have to reluctantly call in the FBI—but then she thought that without another breadcrumb from her tempter, she would never find it.

At last, the website returned the results: an EZ Store storage site in Anacostia. Brennan jotted down the address, mapped her route and gathered her things. She blew through the lab at record speed and almost made it toward the exit before Angela called after her. "Where are you going, missy?"

"I have to meet someone," was all the response she could manage.

"Is this about the case, Dr. Brennan?" Zack asked.

"You'd better not be meeting the Froot Loop!" Angela barked.

"I'll call you in a bit with good news."

"Well that sounds promising," Hodgins offered hopefully to the remaining squints.

Angela rested her elbow on his shoulder and shook her head. "The only thing I can promise you is that Booth is going to be pissed when he finds out that Brennan has been working this case without him."

Zack's eyes widened nervously. "I am not working as his replacement partner again. Agent Booth scares me."

"He scares everybody, buddy," Hodgins concurred.

"Everybody except Dr. Brennan." The group nodded, and then he added as an afterthought, "Dr. Brennan scares me too."

"She's nothing if not unpredictable," Angela observed before forcing herself to return to work and not worry about what her best friend had gotten herself into this time.

-----

Brennan rounded the next corner to the garage. Her mind was fluttering with a thousand different plans, things to say, witty one-liners she might make as she collared her nemesis, but she was coming up empty all around. Also, she needed protection, some sort of backup or insurance of her safety and his surrender. Most of this stuff was Booth's job, and she learned from him what she could, but where she was going, she couldn't take her partner, not if she wanted to resolve this case within herself.

And then, in an instant, all the answers were before her, even if she couldn't interpret them just yet. There at the end of the hall was the one person she was not ready to see. Seeley Booth eyed her apprehensively, his hands flexing rhythmically against his thighs. There was a moment of connection between the two of them, a regret on her part and an apology on his; however, neither knew what to do to bridge the gap between them.

Brennan walked toward him, and Booth, sensing her willingness to reunite, met her halfway. Now that she was standing only a few feet away from him, she was unsure whether or not to follow through with the idea that had suddenly come to her.

The man looked dangerously handsome in his immaculate suit, rebellious tie and starched collar. The contrite look on his face softened his masculine features and elicited more than a little desire from Brennan.

She could do it now, she thought; there would be no better chance, no luckier timing, but she had to do it soon. The heart-stopping pace her brain was whirring at was enough to drive her mad. Temperance Brennan wasn't the type to make spur-of-the-moment decisions that could possibly alter her life, but she had put herself in a position where she had no choice. Did the ends justify the means? She could either be making the biggest mistake of her life, or bring about the sort of change for which she'd been looking. It all boiled down to this moment.

Booth alternated between looking at his partner and looking at the floor. He wondered how much longer he could wait before saying something to her. Brennan was obviously in a hurry, and yet she was forcing him to make the first move. It was exasperating and alluring all in the same instant. Sometimes it felt like they were dating except with all the tension and no release. Finally, he worked up the courage to say something, "I'm sor—"

But he didn't get out a syllable more before Temperance Brennan put one hand on his cheek and one his chest, and kissed him.


	10. The Count of Ten

**Author's Note:**_Massive last full chapter update!!! Alas, we've finally reached the end of our journey, folks. After this hefty chapter, there is merely an epilogue to go, which I have already written and will be up in the very near future. Please enjoy this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it—it may be my favorite chapter thus far._

_I dedicate this chapter to my grandfather who died on October 8__th__. It was he who always wanted to read my writing, but I was never satisfied enough with anything I'd written to share with him. For the first time in my life, I've written something I can finally be proud of, and unfortunately now I cannot share it with him, but I know he'll be reading this over my shoulder and be pleased with what I've done. I couldn't ask for anything more._

_Thank you all, loyal readers! Please let me know if you've enjoyed the ride as much as I have. And a special thanks to my new friend Alamo Girl, who has reminded me why the _Bones_ community is so wonderful in the first place._

**The Count of Ten**

It wasn't filled with passion and desire, not like Booth would have expected from such an impromptu kiss, but rather with surprise and a strange sense of need. But a need for what, he couldn't tell. Brennan's heart remained a vigilantly shrouded mystery despite her hands gliding aimlessly across his broad chest. And he could sense the hesitance on her lips even as they pressed firmly into his; there was no rhythm to her movements, but instead a halting, if not endearing, exploratory quality to them. She was searching for something she could not find from him.

At last, Booth found his surprise fading and desire swirling in its stead. It was only natural to take it to the next level, right? After all, she was the one who initiated, and he had been viscerally imagining this moment since he'd allowed his fingers to graze along the hem of her skirt.

As he brought his hands up to her cheeks, she hurriedly stepped back and shoved her hands into her fitted coat pockets; her gaze was conveniently fixed on the exit. Booth couldn't stand having emotions unresolved, so he reached out tentatively to her again, but this time Brennan immediately returned to the familiar, cool woman she was. He watched as she slipped on that carefully constructed mask of the disconnected scientist and stared at him as though nothing had ever happened. It amazed Booth how easily she could shut him out.

"I have to go out for a bit," she said matter-of-factly.

"Wait, Bones, can't we talk about this for a sec—"

"Nope," she said cheerily, "gotta run!" She waved over her shoulder as she slipped out the exit, the cold, metallic click of the door jamb echoing down the hallway like a "tsk-tsk" from his grandmother.

Booth stood there dumbfounded, his arms out to his sides as if they were covered with stigmata. His mouth was agape, but his lips were still warm from the pressure his partner had exerted on them only moments before.

When he finally reconciled in his mind that the kiss had either been a figment of his imagination or temporary insanity on Brennan's part, he decided to return to his squints and see what they might have uncovered and maybe what had sent Brennan off her rocker.

His walk to the lab was perplexing. The supple squeak of his shoes as they folded with his gait and the gentle rustling of his suit jacket against his shirt offered cold comfort in comparison to the reality of Temperance Brennan's body caressing his. Booth simultaneously missed her and wanted to throttle her for all the things she did to him—and caused within him.

He emerged into the hive of the Jeffersonian, thrumming as usual with harried scientists racing about on assorted orders of imperative business. Ahead of him was Brennan's kingdom, complete with all the essential squints: Hodgins, Angela and Zack. He found his feet strangely leaden, as though his shoes were filled with a heavy metal. He had to reassure himself that they couldn't possibly know what had transpired between their boss and himself.

Angela was first to notice him. She cocked her head to the side when she realized he wasn't approaching their domain. "Booth? You look as if you don't know which way is up."

"I'm not sure I do," he said absently. It was as though he didn't even register that someone was speaking to him, let alone Brennan's best friend.

Angela pursed her lips suspiciously and leaned over the railing toward him. "What did she say?"

"Huh?" he asked, instantly brought out of his daze.

"Brennan. She left here right before you showed up. She's the only person I know who can leave somebody with a face like that."

Before he knew what he was saying, the words tumbled out of Booth's still tingling mouth. "She didn't say anything. She kissed me."

Zack dropped his clipboard, Hodgins ceased his incessant typing and Angela gaped. "What!" both of the male squints said in unison.

"Finally!" said Angela with a clap of her hands.

"Why?" Zack demanded. "What could possibly make Dr. Brennan make such an irrational, illogical, unprofessional decision like that?"

"Hey!" Booth said, mildly offended.

"It had to happen sooner or later. All that unresolved sexual tension," Angela cooed, swaying her hips back and forth. "I'm just glad it happened sooner. I couldn't stand it any longer if I had to see those two mooning over each other."

"But what about Dave?" Zack whined desperately, mourning the loss of his brewski buddy.

Hodgins patted his friend on the back. "Grow up, kid. The geek always loses out to a better pair of biceps."

"Boys!" Angela snapped, and then returned her exuberant gaze to Booth. "You have to give me all of the details! How did she kiss you? Why? What did you say?"

"I didn't say much of anything. I started to apologize, and before I knew it, she had her hand on my cheek and her other hand on my ches—my gun!" Everyone stared at Booth as he patted himself down and checked every pocket. "She took my damn gun! That little—"

"Oh, well, at least now it makes sense," Hodgins said as he returned to his computer satisfied that the world was not coming to an end.

"I feel better now," Zack added as he collected his clipboard and straightened his lab coat.

"Oh, Tempe," Angela sighed. After a moment of watching Booth search fruitlessly for his gun, she smiled at him and said, "Look at it this way, at least she didn't go after him armed with just her feminine wiles."

Booth stopped his search just long enough to look at her and nod. "You're right. She'd be doomed. Wait, what. Go after whom?"

Hodgins arched an eyebrow and deferred to his lovely counterpart who was busy sucking her teeth in frustration.

"Perhaps it's for the best you're gun-free for this moment…"

-----

The cricket minstrels were strumming away furiously in the moist summer heat, but the noise did little to soothe Brennan's ragged nerves. Her hands gripped her steering wheel so tightly that her joints burned, and when she became aware of this, she quickly released their deadly grasp. She needed her muscles to be relaxed and ready, particularly in her trigger finger.

Trigger. Gun. Booth's gun. The gray hunk of machinery weighed down her right side like an anvil in her pocket. The moment she had relieved her partner of his weapon, it had taken on an eerily heavy quality. It took all of her effort to continue to conceal it after her kissing ruse, the image of which was now inundating the back of her mind.

"Stop it, Temperance," she growled aloud to herself. She could afford such a reprimand within the confines of her vehicle, and it was best to get out all of her anger and confusion now before her task was fixed before her and she was launched onto a course from which she could never again deviate.

At the end of a narrow corridor of road loomed the vast lair of Hubert Giggles, a solitary warehouse in the serpentine back alleys of Anacostia. She had concealed her car behind some nearby dumpsters so Giggles wouldn't see it; she did not see any other cars along the paths. Two stories tall, solid and isolated, the warehouse was the perfect place to stash his female victims for the purposes of torture, rape and murder.

Fortunately for Brennan, the images of what he'd inflicted on the Ruh women was enough to bury her convoluted feelings toward her partner, and the gun in her pocket felt that much lighter.

Hubert Giggles, the methodical, practiced, shrewd murderer. Murderer wasn't even the right word for his species—more like chimera. He was human on the outside, but inside was another matter. He rebuked every anthropological schema she'd ever examined. Giggles was in a class all his own: a mind sculpted with hatred and misinterpretation with a conscience sorely lacking. This man seemed to be made of so many strange parts, and he challenged all of Brennan's preconceived notions. To define him, Brennan wouldn't need to look to her text books and fellow scientists, but to the Bible and the Church. She had never believed in Good and Evil as immutable ideas; she had always seen the world in shades of gray and believed that every human made his or her own choices based on past experiences and precedents set by role models. But within Giggles, she could find no gray, just a bottomless abyss, an endless night. There could be no justification for the atrocities he had committed, no explanation for his wrongs nor any way to set the scales in balance again.

Brennan removed the gun from her pocket and let the cool steel caress her fingers. She could have sworn she heard Angela say, "You sure you know what you're doing?"

"Hell, no," she responded, "but I'm going to do it anyway."

She switched her cell phone to silent, and thus Temperance Brennan proceeded to enter the spider's parlor.

-----

"So she was standing right here." Angela leaned slightly over the examination table with Clarimonde Ruh's body on it, wisps of her bangs catching on her eyelids. "She looked down, looked down harder, you know the way she does?"

Booth nodded with a slight smile on his face. "Yeah, she scrunches her face up like she's never seen a bone before, and she hunches over it curiously until she gets that 'Eureka!' moment and then every muscle relaxes. Then she has you guys do all the grunt work." He realized too late that the Squint Squad was staring at him amusedly. "What?" he demanded defensively.

Angela's tongue poked against the inside of her left cheek. "Nothing," she murmured. "You're dead on about the hunching thing."

"Oh yeah," Hodgins continued when he noticed Angela urging him to agree, "and you're totally right about that Eureka thing too. She totally had one of those."

"Yeah? Good." Booth lowered his defenses but kept a watchful eye on the two instigators. "When did this happen?"

Zack filled him in, as he was always particularly astute when it came to Dr. Brennan and her anthropological skills. "She was examining a particular bone, but I can't remember which one."

Booth took a step forward. "What do you mean you can't remember?"

Zack took a deep gulp and looked into the face of pure terror. Thoughts of their brief stint as partners were all too keen in his mind, and he had no urge to repeat them. He quailed under the burly man's intimidating gaze. "That is to say I'm not one hundred percent on which one she was examining. It was either in the upper torso or the neck, but it's hard to say. She wasn't talking to me."

"Well, what was she saying?"

"Dr. Brennan was murmuring something about finally being able to prove you wrong, that now she could prove who it was using real science, but she didn't say how."

"Sometimes I think that's her only goal in life, to prove me wrong," Booth grumbled.

Angela cocked an eyebrow and rubbed him reassuringly on the back. "Well, that and owning a gun."

"She wins on both fronts," Hodgins said cheerily.

Booth waved a hand angrily at them. "Enough from the Peanut Gallery, thanks."

Meanwhile, Zack was investigating the remains and didn't hear a word they had said. "I'm going to have to reexamine these bones exactly the way she did. Let's see, in all probability it was the hyoid bone, but perhaps the thoracic vertebrae…" He trailed off and spent a few minutes handling the fragile shards of ivory, the FBI agent all the while tapping his foot impatiently.

At last, he could stand it no longer. "Damnit, Zack, you're supposed to be the top genius here. You're the one the only one who can find Dr. Brennan. Work, work faster. That idiot's life is at stake." Agent Booth hovered over the young man's shoulder, and Zack could feel the hot irritation rolling off of him.

"I'm going as fast as I can," he insisted, but he felt every inch of pressure from the situation. Summoning every ounce of courage he had in the deepest recesses of his body, he added, "I need you to back off so I can work."

Booth opened his mouth to protest, but instead a tidal wave of shock rocked him and he obliged by taking a few steps back to lean against the railing. His watchful eyes never left Brennan's protégé, but at least the boy had breathing room.

"Come on, Zack, you can do this. I know you can. This is your moment to shine," Angela comforted. She rested a hand on his shoulder.

But Zack sighed with frustration. "I'm not good enough. I'm not Dr. Brennan."

"But you will be someday, and Brennan knows this. She wouldn't have tolerated you this long if she didn't honestly believe that." Zack looked momentarily heartened, and Angela nudged his shoulder encouragingly. "You can do this."

He nodded. "I've got to do this." He stared hard at the bones that lay before him, scrutinized every angle of each of them. He brought one after the other so close to his face he could smell the damp earth and musky scent of decomposition on it. He felt like he'd been staring for hours, but it had only been ten minutes.

"There's nothing here," he said at last in defeat. "Nothing. I have no idea what she saw here to get her so excited. I can't—" His eyes drifted back down to the skeleton. He was hopelessly inept. If Dr. Brennan died, it'd be all his fault. Worse yet, what if they never found her again because no one was as good as she was at finding the truth?

That's when he saw it. If he hadn't bowed his head, the light would never have caught it. "She wasn't looking at the hyoid or the thoracic vertebrae! She was looking at the anomaly on the third pectoralis minor!"

"Just pretend for a second that I'm not a world-renowned forensic anthropologist, and tell me what the hell that means."

"But you're not an anthropologist."

Booth sighed heavily. "I know that, Zack. It was thinly veiled sarcasm that obviously shouldn't have been veiled at all. Would you just translate please?"

"Dr. Brennan is right—we know who did this." He chose a long, sharp sliver of bone and presented it before his colleagues. "Watch the inside of this rib carefully." When Zack tilted the bone outward to show the concave bend in the bone, a misshapen fingerprint materialized like a bad childhood memory or the vestiges of the boogeyman under the bed. "Notice the distinctive ripple bisecting the whorls and the smooth, lineless patch above. This print could only be made by someone with extensive burn damage to his hands."

"How does that prove who did this?" Booth said perplexedly.

"Oh my god," Angela said with genuine shock and what Booth interpreted as sadness. "She didn't tell you anything about her lunch?"

"What's this about a lunch?" Hodgins and Angela exchanged looks, and Angela, the braver of the two, recounted everything that Brennan had told her from Giggles' flirtations to his charred fingertips. Booth stood there dumbfounded, his eyes clouded over with something that Angela had never seen in him—melancholy.

He had lost everything important that he could have sworn he had: Brennan's trust and confidence. She had locked him out and all because of his foolish pride. Why hadn't he listened to her, the one time she had a hunch about something? She was right after all—he was a fool.

The always ready relationship counselor, Angela put her hand on Booth's bicep and smiled comfortingly. "Don't feel badly. She wouldn't have told me either. I just happened to be standing in her way; there was no other way to get rid of me."

Booth pretended to shrug it off and looked back at the grad student, who stood uneasily by the examination table. "All right, we know the lunatic went to see another lunatic. Where do you think they are?"

"Hm, obvious guess here, but how about an insane asylum?" Hodgins offered.

Booth shook his head. "I asked where they are, not where do they belong. Other ideas?"

"We could call her, but we should know by now that our girl has got her phone on silent or off all together because she's just passed that level of crazy that even madmen don't dare to operate on. Wait, phone. I remember something about a phone," Angela began. "Brenn hurried out of here after she received a text message."

"A text message? Perfect! Thank you, I love you all." Booth immediately made a beeline for the exit.

"Go chase your girl!" Angela cried optimistically. Booth stayed long enough to leave her the image of a skeptical frown and disappeared beyond the archways.

Hodgins double-checked that the agent had gone before he said, "If that wasn't the most awkward exchange yet. I can't believe Dr. Brennan kissed him, even if it was for his gun."

Angela leaned against his computer desk and raised her eyebrows. "Maybe she actually listened to my advice."

"Oh lord, are you on that again? What advice was it this time? 'Save a horse, ride an FBI agent' or was it 'Carpe Booth'?"

"Can't remember exactly, but it had something to do with champagne and handcuffs."

"I like where this is going," Hodgins nodded approvingly. "How about a little break yourself? I've got a bottle of Dom Pérignon just waiting for a lovely lady to drink it with me."

She puckered her lips in contemplation only for a moment before shrugging her shoulders. "Why not? Normally I'd be worried sick about Brennan, but now that Booth's got unresolved issues with her, he'd cross the Devil himself just bring her back to life and kill her again."

"That image doesn't worry you."

"Naw," she said hopefully, "because I think he'd kill her with love."

"Still not feeling the comfort there, but if it gets you to have a drink with me, I'm on board. If anyone needs us, they've got our cell numbers."

On her way down the steps with Hodgins, Angela stopped to congratulate Zack on his incredible find. "I knew you could do it, Z-man. Dr. Brennan will be proud."

"Oh crap."

"What? Zack, what? You've got that Medusa-just-turned-me-into-stone look," she asked worriedly.

His petrified eyes were focused on nothing tangible, just a fleeting image of his inevitable demise at the hands of his mentor. "I didn't think about what Dr. Brennan would do to me if I led Booth to her after she had intentionally tried to avoid him. I'm toast."

"Yeah, and toast always lands butter-side down. Sorry, pal, but I recommend you live up these last few hours while you can. It was nice knowing ya." Hodgins patted his friend roughly on the back as he escorted Angela out of the Jeffersonian.

"Poor Zack," she whispered. "That guy lives in eternal fear of the Higher Authorities."

"Well, you would too if your gods were Brennan, Queen of the Dead, and Booth, Lord of I-Know-Where-You-Live." She laughed, and Hodgins smiled coyly. He couldn't wait for that champagne.

-----

There was no light here, no laughter, no gummy worms, no safety. The warehouse at the end of an unmarked road offered only night terrors and cold reality. Brennan eased her way along the featureless walls of Giggles' warehouse. She was careful not to make even the smallest sound. Booth's gun was in her right hand close to her body; it was as reassuring as a child's first blanket, and she treated it just as reverently. With her free hand, she tucked some errant hairs behind her ears. She checked every angle to make sure she wasn't being stalked or watched.

She was being careful, much more so than usual. She exercised more caution here than she ever had in her life, particularly because she had very little element of surprise; after all, she'd been _invited_. So she promised herself she would not charge nonchalantly into the building and she would not fearlessly hoist the gun in the villain's face the second she saw him. Even Temperance Brennan knew when to tone it down sometimes.

At last, a black portal loomed before her. It was open, a tender gesture from her gracious host. Hesitantly, she stood beside it, unwilling to go plodding through when she knew full well Giggles could be waiting to spring a trap. After moments of deliberation, Brennan craned her head around the frame and waited for her eyes to adjust to the blackness within the womb of the warehouse. Eventually inky shapes revealed themselves—banisters, staircases, hallways and a few pieces of crumbling machinery—and Brennan realized the magnitude of the situation. If she judged correctly, she was not safe in any area of this warehouse because Giggles could literally emerge from anywhere. Maybe if she kept her back against the wall…

Despite the time she spent analyzing the room, Brennan knew there was no other way around it—she had to go in now or not at all. Carefully she sidled around the door frame, hoping her shadow or silhouette wouldn't catch her stalker's eye. Inside was mostly cavernous, open and empty like a gaping maw. For a dangerous moment, Brennan entered the mind of the man she was seeking, something she wasn't particularly accustomed to and it chilled her. He had chosen this place well: there was a wide viewing area, like the arenas and amphitheaters of ancient Rome; and she suspected he thought a lot of what he arranged for his victims to do down here was like show for him. This was his kingdom, and he had total reign over it and all those inside of it.

Above her was a series of catwalks, narrow, rusting grating lined with delicate railings that encircled the room like a ribcage. She squinted for any movement up there, but there was none. To her immediate left lay the black portal into a hallway that probably held abandoned offices and bathrooms, but there was no way to tell without exploring, and Brennan couldn't afford the luxury of a flashlight. To the right was mostly empty space, barren expanses of wall that soared almost thirty feet up to a ring of chipped, smoky windows. They let in next to no light and served as a grim reminder that there was no hope within such a place.

She inched along the wall, scouring for clues as she went. Even above her vigilante-ism, Brennan knew this was a crime scene, and she had to protect it at all costs. As her eyes swept the area, the scientist in Brennan noted that the walls were painted an industrial gray consistent with the flakes of paint found on Clarimonde Ruh's bones. This place was growing more promising forensically by the second.

Near the foot of the stairs, Brennan froze stock still. She swore she heard a rustle coming from one of the corridors along the back wall. She waited, pressing her body as flat as she could into the shadows. When she was sure she'd heard nothing further, she continued her agonizingly tedious journey toward the first hallway.

Brennan felt the intense surge of adrenaline bubble through her veins, and she realized that, physiologically speaking, her body was urging her to escape such a high-anxiety situation, but rationally she could not talk herself out of it. There was a confirmed murder out there, and she was the only one invited to try and capture him.

Steeling her nerves, she hugged Booth's gun close to her as she approached the entryway. Again she stopped to examine the entrails of the building, only this time it was even darker, like being lost in subterranean caves.

Now or never.

Brennan plunged inside, probably too noisily, she realized as her shoes scuffed against the dusty cement floors. She concentrated on one foot in front of the other as she grazed the right wall with her shoulder. She came to one door frame and paused to gingerly examine whether the door was locked or not; it was, so she pressed on. The second door was the same. The third door was on the opposite side, and Brennan crossed long enough to confirm that it was locked as well. She retreated to the right side again and realized the hallway terminated in an L shape that probably connected to the next hallway.

The anthropologist turned her head back toward the amphitheater long enough to say goodbye to the soft beacon of dull light. She knew she had to turn the corner where there would be no backlight at all. She had to do it, for the Ruhs, for poor Grant Fine, for herself.

In an instant, Brennan was immersed in the deepest blackness she had ever experienced, darker than the previously unexplored catacombs in the Vatican she had been asked to evaluate, darker than the South African diamond mines that had trapped hundreds of workers and through which she had had to sift through the dirty rubble to uncover them even in absolute darkness—so dark, she couldn't even prove her eyes were open if she didn't touch them with her hands. She marveled fleetingly at how much darker each piece of this warehouse could get, but she knew any darker than this was eternal sleep—death. She maintained her steady pattern of following the right wall. Periodically she would stop and listen for footsteps, but thankfully there were none.

And then at the mouth of the connection, she heard the distinct sounds of scratching, many, many feet and claws scurrying and scraping along the hard floor. Rats. The same rats that nibbled on the remains of the Ruhs? Unlikely considering their short life spans, but they could conceivably be their descendents. The thought repulsed even this hardnosed scientist. They sounded as though they were surrounding her, and Brennan had the sickening feeling that they would overwhelm her if she didn't immediately escape the darkness.

Foolishly, she dove around the corner and stumbled into something soft. Something upright and soft. Something breathing. In the wan light of the distant amphitheater again in view, she made out the silhouette of a human. Body structure and physique suggested male, as did the close-cropped hair and collar of the starched shirt, but Brennan didn't need any of her anthropology skills to tell her what her gut knew. She was now wrapped in the arms of Hubert Giggles, her back against his chest like a lover who had sneaked up from behind for a surprise hug.

She heard the stiff crinkle of his shirt as he lowered his mouth to her ear and whispered breathily, "As silent as the grave in here, wouldn't you say?"

Brennan couldn't move, could barely breathe, and she certainly couldn't find her voice to respond. Her captor's grip was feather light but intense beyond all compare. His touch was stifling, and for reasons she could not explain, it held sway over her. She simply could not lift a muscle nor the gun she had pressed against her chest. Giggles' right arm slithered over her shoulder and down between her breasts, lightly caressing them with the back of his hand until his fingers grazed the thin neck of the service revolver. "Now, now, no need for violence, my dear. I merely wanted a little tête-à-tête with my old friend, Temperance. Let go," he cooed.

Somehow—she had no means of knowing how—Giggles acquired her weapon. He slipped it into the back of his waistband, and most surprising of all, he let her go. She stumbled back to the end of the tunnel and slumped against it, breathless and dizzy. She could not see his face since his back was to the light, but she didn't have to. Her training in kinesics allowed her to read his body language with relative ease: softened shoulders suggested little tension; cocked head, curiosity; arms at his sides, comfort; and legs shoulder-width apart, stability. Altogether, Giggles was the perfect model of composure.

"You're studying me, Temperance. I find that," he paused, "charming. I have been studying you as well."

At last, Brennan found her voice, what little of it left she had. "You're under arrest."

She couldn't see his face, but she knew he was smirking. "We both know you're not an officer of the law. Even if you were, you have no reason to arrest me."

"Really?" she said, her hackles finally rising. She stood up from the wall and approached him. "How about the deaths of two innocent women?"

"Oh, I doubt that very seriously. I had nothing to do with them."

"Then you deny harboring then burying their remains?"

"Clearly."

"Sorry to inform you, _buddy_, but I've got a rib bone with your melted fingerprint on it."

"Intriguing."

Brennan scowled. "That's all you have to offer? 'Intriguing?' Listen, I don't know what they taught you in evil villain school, but a fingerprint on human remains is about as guilty as it gets. You're going down for this, Mr. Giggles, and I'm the one taking you in."

The killer turned his back to her and walked toward the central room, his hands clasped neatly behind his back. Brennan followed at a relatively safe distance should he try to grab her again, but he did not. In the arena, he turned again to face her. "If everything is as definitive as you say it is, where, may I ask, is Agent Booth as well as the rest of the sharply dressed fury of the Federal Bureau of Investigation?" Brennan stood there silently, her keen eyes fixed on him. Now that she could see his face, she saw his smooth features, bright eyes and gently amused mouth, and hated him all the more for his condescension.

"You know, just a moment ago, you hesitated in my arms." The corners of his lips softened with the memory.

"My receptors must have misinterpreted the environment due to the extreme sensory deprivation in the hallway. My hypothalamus and biological clock was set to nighttime, slowing heart rate—"

"I think we both know you're heart was thumping," he couldn't resist interjecting with great relish.

"—breathing and neural processing. Therefore, reduced speed of the electrochemical message along the axons to my myelinated neurons delayed my inevitable revulsion from your touch." This justification was completely over-the-top, but it was more for herself than for her opponent, a sign that she was still Temperance Brennan, preeminent forensic anthropologist and brilliant all-around scientist. She noticed he was surprisingly unimpressed by her words, so she added bitingly, "In other words, it was temporary insanity."

Giggles began to circle her, his stiff leather shoes clicking and squeaking on the concrete. Brennan recognized the primal motion as hunter/prey behavior; he was sizing her up, and she had to hope to come out worthy of living. For the time being, he kept his distance of a few yards, and it was enough to let Brennan feel as though she still had some chance of escape if need be.

"Shall we not cut to the chase?" he began. "I told you at lunch today that I… _desire _honesty above all else in a mate. I am curious how honest you are, Temperance."

"I don't see how that's relevant considering I would never, ever partake in a relationship with a serial killer."

He sniffed with amusement and ceased his circling. He folded his arms over his chest and proceeded to analyze her just as she had been doing to him. "I'll lay it out on the table because, whatever else you may think of me, I know I can trust you with what I'm about to share." She opened her mouth to interrupt, but Giggles raised a hand that immediately silenced her.

"I killed those women, Temperance, I did. Goodness, it's wonderful to admit that! I killed them all."

"All?" Brennan couldn't help it—the tremor of shock displayed in her voice, and there was no way to take it back.

Surprisingly, Giggles did not bother berating or chastising her for it; he seemed to deem it appropriate for the moment. "All, yes. Three women to be exact."

"Not Jenna," she said near tears. She staved them back for the time being, but the situation was growing more dire by the second. Had the air grown thicker? It was hard to breathe.

He nodded solemnly. "Every man's dream, I suppose, to have women offering themselves to him. I was their emperor and they were—"

"Your concubines."

He bounced on his tip-toes before resuming his circling, this time a foot or so closer to Brennan. "I had to try them all out, you see. I had to find my match. See if any of them were worthy of being my empress."

"But you never did. A king doesn't marry his concubines." As much as she hated to admit it, she was starting to see the delusions and misunderstandings that governed this man's sense of reality. His cultural ideals were that of a Roman king, that women were for pleasure and used as a measure of one man's superiority over all others. Of course, Hubert Giggles had taken things way off course and had polluted cultural history to suit his own needs, but that didn't change the fact that she could follow where he was now leading her. Was this what he meant about trusting her? Could she really understand him, and did that ultimately mean that on some level she was like him?

"Precisely," he said delightfully and then trailed off. His eyes did not depart from hers, and he seemed to catch on to her epiphany. Still, he had the good sense not to prod her about it. "I had not found my empress."

"Things have changed?" she continued warily, picking up his slack. It was too late when she realized that was exactly what he wanted her to ask.

His net tightened again, this time by another few feet. "It seems they have." A wave of repulsion rippled through her. He couldn't mean her, he just couldn't. She waited with bated breath for whose name he would next speak.

With a twinkle in his eye, he said, "Your pretty friend, Angela Montenegro."

Brennan would have recoiled in horror were it not for the fact that she didn't believe him for a second. For the briefest of moments, Brennan imagined he was acting out some sort of primitive mating ritual, fluffing his feathers, trying to make her jealous, but she couldn't imagine why—she had to be giving off waves of revulsion by the bucket load.

When she didn't respond, he probed, "She is beautiful, isn't she? Venus herself in human flesh."

Suddenly she knew what she was to glean from this exchange. "How long have you been watching me?"

"Long enough, Temperance, long enough."

He was closer now, intolerably so. She could smell the starch in his shirt. He wasn't pacing anymore; there was no need. He had gathered the information he needed and he had already made up his mind about what he was going to do. "You like Roman mythology," Brennan said, biding herself some time.

Her mind was racing, an endless loop of chastising for her foolhardy plan followed by a prayer for rescue. "Please, someone, anyone. Please get here soon." But she didn't really mean for anyone to come, she meant for Booth. She realized the error of her ways now, too late, before this monstrosity.

"I dabble, but it's more out of a deep respect of history. Life was grander then, people believed in something. Ah, but I bore you. Let us change the topic of discussion to something a little more dear to my heart."

Brennan braced for his next question, but even then it wasn't what she had expected. "Temperance, what do you see in that man of yours?"

She blinked. In spite of her serious situation, she wanted to laugh. "Booth?"

Giggles frowned. "Not your partner. David, that man you're dating. Why are you with him? You're obviously too clever for his simplistic intellect. He couldn't possibly understand the complexities of your being nor deserve the raptures of your beauty."

"Oh, and a man who ritualistically rapes, tortures and mutilates innocent, unsuspecting women has all the answers to love?"

"Those women were false. They lied to me. They spoke deceitful platitudes of love to me, so I put them through a trial of fire. I tested their faith in love, and before a week was up, their true black hearts were revealed. Like picking up a beautiful shell to treasure, only to find a hideous, writhing creature underneath. Queenly material, I think not. They were peddling their wares in hopes of a reprieve, an escape from someone who had given them the world on a platter."

Suddenly, his eyes became very fixed on her face and then traveled down her body. His voice mimicked the sound of silk sliding across marble. "Would you break, Temperance? If I tested your love for David, if I tested you, would you break? I wonder."

She saw the coldness in his features, the face of a killer. He was searching for truth within her, and she knew she had to give it to him. It was the only way she could save herself. It would continue the game, the dance, but she could maintain some control. "I don't love David."

Giggles nodded slowly. "I know."

-----

Agent Booth sped down one highway after another and realized with some ironic bitterness that Angela was right, he was indeed chasing after his girl. Of course, the context of the phrase "his girl" was all screwed up, but he recognized that Brennan was indeed his. If anyone had asked, he would have argued on a superficial level that she was his partner and worked with him for the FBI. In reality, Booth knew it ran deeper than that.

Since this case had begun, Seeley had started to see Temperance in a softer light. She wasn't just the tormented scientist with an intellect even God envied; she was a woman who empathized against her will and believed in justice at all costs. And yes, she was more than a little nutty, but she chose to continue working with him, and he wanted that relationship to last until he couldn't lift his gun anymore and she couldn't lift a magnifying glass. Was that so much to ask, he wondered.

Traffic wasn't horrible, but it was irritating, and Booth's patience could best be summarized as a single strand of thread holding up a bowling ball. All it took was one old lady in a 1982 Cadillac Eldorado for him to punch the gas, flip the bird and cut her as well as three other people off. Every second he wasted behind these morons was a second closer to tragedy for his Temperance.

"What does she honestly think getting herself killed by this maniac is going to prove to me? I was wrong," he shouted to his non-existent passengers. "I made a mistake, and she shouldn't pay for it."

That was the tragic part, Booth realized, that Brennan didn't recognize her sometimes suicidal behavior or misinterpreted it entirely as independence. She wouldn't view this as a mistake. When he found her, she would inevitably spout some anthro-babble about how this was a fascinating study in deviant social and cultural behavior, and Booth would mount the Herculean task of trying to show her the proper way to apprehend a criminal, and there wasn't a moment in his whole life he wished for more than that. He couldn't wait to be bored and frustrated to death by the woman he wanted to work alongside forever.

Which is why he sideswiped a Toyota Tacoma and blazed through a red light. All in the interest of symbiosis.

-----

Back in the dank confines of the warehouse, Brennan was thinking about anything but symbiosis and anthro-babble. She was knee-deep in the most horrific and unsettling conversation of her life, and she had studied and confronted hundreds of killers.

Hubert Giggles stepped back a pace with a pleased countenance. "Thank you, Temperance, for your honesty. In return, I will reward you with a bit of my own. I want—" he glanced down at the floor in some sort of momentary panic, as though he could not find the right words, "—no, I desire you to know that I never raped Hanna."

"You broke her mother's bones if she didn't do what you wanted. Coercion is rape," Brennan spat. "And what of the other two women? Jenna and Clarimonde? They were conveniently absent from your pretty little speech."

Giggles shook his head in frustration. "Hanna and I were in love since the moment Jenna brought her home from school with her one day. The connection was instantaneous, like lightning. She slipped me her number on the way out that evening with the message to call her that night. We talked, and she seemed like a kindred spirit—a lonely soul in a place she didn't fit in. The more we talked, the deeper our connection became. She was my Juliet, and I was her Romeo. Ours was a tragic love."

"Love? You don't know the meaning of the word."

"Oh, and I suppose a great anthropologist like yourself does?" he retaliated with unexpected fervor. "I've watched you, Temperance. I see what you think of love. You believe it's a form of control established by society in order to market to the masses. Make them believe in an abstract idea no one can scientifically prove and then sell them Valentine's Day and anniversary junk. Isn't that what it is, Temperance? Love is nothing more than a society-imposed concept borne from physical attraction and the necessity of a species to procreate.

"My," he reflected with less anger, "You really are quite the teacher. Perhaps you should consider an alternate line of work."

Brennan's breath hissed through her teeth. It came so hot and rapid that her lungs ached. Her anger had never been so true or pervasive. She wanted to kill this man for mocking her, but she wanted to kill him even more because he was right. Listening to his regurgitation of everything she had ever told Booth and the others, it sounded so ignorant and wrong. She wanted to throw up, to purge herself of the mental intercourse he had just completed.

"You will be made to suffer for your actions," she promised in a voice that was her own and yet not. She sounded savage and primitive, an animal bent on revenge. She terrified herself.

"Now, now, Tempe. Jealousy is not a virtue."

Brennan contemplated kneeing him in the scrotum and handcuffing him to a sewer pipe until she could call Booth, but as she judged Giggles' current distance from her at four to five feet, he would likely expect some sort of attack and incapacitate her all together. The most she could muster to his nauseating comment was, "I was going more for righteous anger."

"All I ever wanted was the truth from those women. I wanted to know if they really loved me, and every last one of them lied. I asked them if they loved me, and they said yes! I know perfectly well they just said that because they thought that was what I wanted to hear. So I cut out their hearts as they had cut out mine with their lies."

Another foot closer. "But you, Temperance, you and I have a real connection. We have a foundation we can build something on. You don't lie. You play things straight. You don't mince words and say things you don't mean. You don't tap-dance around issues. What you see is what you get, and I can really see this relationship going somewhere." He winked at her.

Brennan scowled. "You wink at me like I'm supposed to get something special out of this, but all I'm getting is indigestion. Whatever deluded fantasy you have built up in your mind around our relationship, let me assure you that it has no basis in reality. You, Hubert Giggles, should not be allowed to continue living in society. I'm arresting you for multiple murder. You're either going to come along peacefully, or I will exercise my right to use force."

His lips twitched devilishly, and as if answering her prayer, he took another step toward her. "I love it when you talk dirty."

"Hope you love this too," she muttered as she reached out and seized his wrist, twisting his left arm painfully behind his back until his knees began to buckle from the pain. Still, he made no other outward sign of discomfort, and, in fact, he grinned irritatingly. Brennan easily fished the gun out of his waistband, released his arm, backed off and kept a bead on his chest.

Giggles laughed and sat up on his knees. "An unexpected turn of events, though not entirely unpleasant. You're an absolute delight when you're livid."

The door to the warehouse swung open, and Brennan could hardly trust what she perceived until she heard, "Calvary's here." It was Booth. She couldn't be sure because of the faint light, but she thought she saw relief and happiness wash over him when he saw her holding Giggles at gunpoint. She was elated that he came in just in time to see her man-handling her target. He'd never have to know what really happened. "Thank God you're all right." If she weren't detaining a killer, she would have run to him and thrown her arms around him, perhaps even have kissed him for real.

"Booth," she began incredulously, "what are you doing here?"

He stepped inside, and Brennan got a good look at her partner, who was more masculine, more imposing than usual. She thought he was probably asserting his dominance in their relationship, but she refrained from making a comment, for once in her life; if Booth had known that, he probably would have died from a coronary. "Rescuing you from your own mental illness," he quipped.

She frowned. "No, I mean how did you find me?"

"The Ringmaster may have meant that text for you, but it was easy enough for the FBI to trace."

"I didn't need the FBI, I used the Internet."

"Bones, what do you want, a cookie? Your way led you headfirst into a serial killer's lair _alone_. You could have just come to me, you know."

"And have you ignore my convictions?"

"Okay, I was an ignorant ass, but you can't seriously believe that I'd ignore hard evidence?"

"Oh! So Zack found the fingerprint! His progress is really quite impressive—"

"Bones?" he said with a curious tone. "What happened to Giggles?"

"What do you—" She turned her head to look at the spot where she had been holding him and realized with her fair share of horror that he was no longer there. She looked around the room and at last caught a glimpse of a figure racing into one of the black portals under the stairs. "Hm."

"Hm? Hm! That's all you have to say about it? It's amazing how you squints minimize any situation not directly related to dead bodies."

"It's not like he's got anywhere to go. I'm sure you've got HRT stationed around the building."

Booth's brow wrinkled slightly and he lowered the barrel of his gun just a tiny bit, but it was more than enough evidence for Brennan to decipher his meaning. "You came alone? I cannot believe you had the audacity to storm in here like a superhero without reinforcements."

"Hey, pot, why don't you save the speech for another kettle, okay? We have a murderer to catch. Besides, they're on their way."

"You just wanted to be first."

"Water under the bridge, Bones. Can't you just let sleeping dogs lie?"

"That's three clichés in under a minute," she wryly observed.

Booth looked up at the ceiling slack-jawed. "I'm taking _my_ gun back, by the way," he retorted nastily, snatching the weapon from her hands and dropping it back into its home in his holster.

"And what am I supposed to do if he starts firing at us?"

"Take cover, and let me do my job, which is what you should have done in the first place instead of _kissing _me."

Booth took off toward the hallway into which Giggles had disappeared only moments before. Despite Brennan's worries that he would escape, Booth secretly believed that the killer wasn't going anywhere without finishing business with them first. He had no doubt Giggles knew the FBI hadn't shown up yet and the man had more than enough time to salvage whatever sinister plan he had. Booth would find him and string him up for what he'd put his partner through.

As they entered the dark tunnel, Booth offered Brennan something metallic. "Is it a gun?" she asked hopefully.

"Right, like I'm going to give you a gun when you're standing behind me. No, it's a flashlight."

"Oh, so I'm your map light now. Turn me on and off when you want."

"You're the one who kissed me, remember?" he whispered angrily. Momentarily, he turned to face her, the flashlight's beam revealing a confused and frustrated expression that Brennan, for once, could not interpret.

"I don't follow."

"Why did you kiss me?"

She shrugged. "I got creative."

"I thought I told you getting creative meant no gun."

"You told me that, but I chose to interpret it creatively," she persisted.

Booth turned back to the hallway and continued his careful progression, inch by inch along the dusty floor. "It's like reasoning with a shark. So the reason you kissed me was just to get my gun?"

"Of course." Sometimes she could be so blunt, he reflected, that he just wanted to shake some tact into her. Didn't she consider his feelings at all in the matter, or was she entirely ignorant of them? Recently he feared he'd become more and more transparent, and perhaps a part of him even hoped that her kiss was proof she'd picked up on them and responded positively.

He shook his head, not wanting to believe this was the answer, not allowing himself to believe it. "No, there were plenty of other ways you could have gotten that gun out of the holster. You chose that one. Why?"

"I—It seemed like the most logical and expedient choice." She stuttered, an encouraging sign.

"And I thought you said you weren't much of an actor?"

"I'm not."

"So there had to be at least a little something behind that kiss, something to improv off of."

"Now is not the time, Booth!" she barked.

"And when this is over, will that be the time?"

"I doubt it."

"Of course," he echoed with annoyance.

She paused and leaned in enticingly close to his ear, enough so that her hot breath funneled down his collar and ignited his skin. "You know, Booth, I wouldn't have kissed you if I hadn't needed your gun. Really, I wouldn't want to cross that line with you."

"You wouldn't?" he said in a tone that spoke not with disappointment or shock, but with challenge. It sounded like a dare, and Brennan was surprised at the fight she had to put up within herself to resist taking him up on it.

"Can we just forget it ever happened and work on finding a madman? Honestly, you find the most inappropriate moments to discuss these things."

"You were the one who kissed me on the way to catch said madman! You set the precedent for inappropriatenessity."

"Is that even a word?"

"Now who's being ridiculous?"

"Both of you," came the unexpected and frightening answer. It sounded like it came from all around them—above them, behind them, in front and in back of them. It was impossible to pinpoint the direction from whence it came, and Brennan swept the light wildly around the corridor to no avail. Booth put his hand on hers and directed the beam toward the ground. They stood stock-still, his skin still pressing into hers; unfortunately, neither had time to analyze the feelings this contact excited as a pebble rolled down the hallway toward them.

Booth took off running in the direction toward it while Brennan kept pace behind him, shining the beacon as best she could in front of him. They rounded a sharp corner, but when Brennan raised the flashlight, the hallway was empty. "Damnit," Booth cursed.

"Look," she said, directing the flashlight upwards. A row of ancient PA speakers lined the hallway. Just then, the light coming from the tool wavered, surged and faded, and then blinked out all together. "The flashlight's dead." She growled and tapped the instrument a few times with the butt of her palm to no avail, not even a single flicker. "Just like in the movies."

"How would you know about that?"

"Why is it so hard for you to believe that I've seen movies."

"I don't know, Bones. I guess I just didn't think it fit in with your view of the world."

"Which is what exactly?"

"Do we have to talk about this now?"

"Yes, actually. You brought it up."

"I just meant you view the world differently from us mere mortals. You're much more analytical. I never imagined you plopping down with a bowl of popcorn to watch _Ghostbusters_."

"Hey, I enjoyed that film, especially the part with the golem created from marshmallow."

"See, proves my point exactly. You couldn't just say Stay Puft Marshmallow Man like everybody else."

"I forgot his name," she said, wounded.

"Besides that, you usually call them 'films' or 'cinemas.' Nobody does that."

She colored slightly from the critique, anxious to prove she wasn't as disconnected from the world as she perpetually seemed to be. "It's true I often find myself looking for anthropological meaning in fil—"

"Is that a bone?" Booth said suddenly. Brennan's thorough eyes worked diligently through the darkness and swept methodically over each segment of the room just long enough to realize she'd been had.

She turned back to her partner and furrowed her brow. "If I believed that psychology had any scientific merit, I'd tell you to see a psychiatrist for your mental problems." He opened his mouth to respond, but she snapped, "And mention that pot one more time, and I'll knock you over the head with one."

Despite their dangerous predicament, Booth allowed himself to smile as did Brennan. "If we make it out of this in one piece," he thought to himself, "I'll give the woman a damn gun." Then maybe only a moment later, a fleeting, barely acknowledged microsecond at the back of his mind, he pondered what his partner might do next time she wanted a gun and he kept it from her.

However, all playful thoughts and banter vanished the instant he heard the PA's crackle to life. "Agent Booth, I have to mention how unprecedented I found your arrival. Initially, I confess it irked me a tad, but I realize now that perhaps it isn't such a disappointment after all."

Booth had no doubt he meant it to be cryptic, but he wasn't in a conciliatory mood. "Hey, psycho, the whole idea was to disappoint."

"Lemons to lemonade, I suppose," Giggles mused.

Brennan leaned in to her partner and whispered, "I've tried, Booth. The man is unflappable."

"Obviously," he said, raising his voice, "he hasn't spent enough time around you."

"That's where you're wrong, my good agent. I've spent enough time of late cherishing Temperance with my eyes and ears to know that simply isn't possible."

"He is talking about you, right?" Brennan elbowed her partner sharply in the ribs; she knew exactly which region to target for the sharpest, long-lasting pain. Booth snarled and massaged his side with the side of his arm.

"Truly the same. I've seen things that would make you blush, Agent Booth."

Brennan wanted to refute his claim as an impossibility, but she found no words could overcome her sense of violation and shame. The idea of someone tailing her, of watching her every move without even her slightest knowledge was horrifying. The safe world she had constructed around herself based on her conviction that she could always protect herself shattered completely. It felt like she was thrust into a dense jungle without so much as a pocket knife, and no amount of survival skills could protect her from the unknown pitfalls surrounding her.

Unconsciously, Booth huddled nearer to her, not just because of what Giggles was insinuating, but also because somewhere inside he knew she needed him and his strength. Riding on that resentment of the man who had made her feel this way, Booth aimed at approximately where he heard the voice coming from and fired at one of the speakers. It fizzed and sparked above their heads, a dull hiss issuing from its smoldering contents. The momentary burst of light rejuvenated the pair of them, and though the embers eventually faded to nothingness, a glimmer of hope flickered in their hearts.

"My, my," was the tinny reply from the now-distant speakers. "I was merely being honest. Temperance appreciates my honesty."

Booth shouted at down the hallway with all the breath in his lungs. "Come out, coward, and face me. Your sorry attempts at terrorism scare no one."

"If that's so, why did you shoot my speaker?"

"Don't try and analyze me, you maniac. Evil can never understand Good."

"I'm afraid that's where you're wrong, my good sir. If I am to follow the comparison you just set up, and I am to assume that I am on Evil's side, then I would say to you that the problem isn't that Evil doesn't understand Good—it's that we understand you too well. And that's what makes us dangerous and you easy to predict. We know what to exploit, how hard to hit to make your knees buckle, and we know above all else that you will always follow us. That's what makes you easy to trap as well. And should I be Evil and you Good, then, therefore, according to this world we have just fleshed out, than I would say you are delightfully in my trap." He let them stew in their silence for a moment and then said, "Lucky for us, the world isn't divided by such a blatant dichotomy."

"You never really loved any of those girls you tortured," Brennan said at last. It seemed such an obvious statement, and she thought herself silly for having voiced it, but she was compelled to speak all the same. "You didn't care anything for them. Whatever happened to make you the way you are—whatever environment you were raised in or whatever social groups you were cast out of—none of it gives you the right to take another person's life."

"Oh, Temperance. You do delight me. You are rationalizing what cannot be rationalized. True, I never did love them, but I'll tell you what I did love." The stagnant air swelled and pulsed and licked against her hot skin as she waited for his confession. She had forgotten Booth and his guns; she had forgotten the darkness; she had forgotten the Jeffersonian and her squints; she had forgotten her parents and Russ and that horrible Christmas years ago. The only thing that existed now were those speakers and the voice behind them. "I loved dominating them. I loved making them say things that no respectable woman would ever have said. I loved mutilating their fair flesh. And best of all, I loved making them do it to themselves. I gave them the right to choose to whom it happened, and they inevitably chose their own selves." The empty space surrounding her somehow felt full, like sucking tar pulling her down no matter how hard she fought to break the surface.

He continued, "But I could never do that to my Temperance."

"Why?" she gasped with what felt like the last of her breath.

"Because you I do love."

For the first time in her life, she felt faint. She stumbled to her left, and Booth was there because he was always there. She slumped against his right shoulder, and he reached an arm around her to hold her up. "You son of a bitch. I will make you pay."

"Don't make promises you can't keep, Agent Booth."

"Who says I won't keep it?"

"Just a hunch." And with that, the speaker clicked off.

Booth wasn't sure what to do. He wanted to stay with Brennan and soothe her, to hold her until she felt the strength return to her legs, but Hubert Giggles was a serial killer, and if he escaped, he would kill again. It was not a question of if, but when. He couldn't leave his Bones here either, not when the murderer had a fixation on her. "Think fast, Booth," he told himself.

"Bones?" he said tentatively. Her eyes were dazed, but she nodded immediately. "It's now or never. I've got to catch the bastard."

She squeezed his forearm. "I want to go with you."

"Of course." She stood up, and though she had now ceased all physical contact, Booth could tell she was staring at him, even through the dimness. "Is there something you want, Bones?"

She bowed her head and then looked toward the hall exit. "Would you mind if I stuck close?"

"I wouldn't let you do anything else."

"You wouldn't let me?" she said with renewed fire.

"That's my girl."

Brennan stepped back a few feet yet remained only an arm's reach away. They pushed through the thick veil of night and from one hallway into another, the last. Giggles was running out of places to hide, and Booth, for one, was itching to get him in his sights. He felt the body heat of his partner close behind—a position she had never willingly accepted before; thankfully she showed no signs of protest now.

They rounded another corner, plunged into the pure heart of blackness and swam through it blindly. Brennan's right fingertips pinched a sliver of Booth's suit jacket, and she held on with all her might.

They moved carefully, sinuously along the walls. Brennan felt every extension of her leg muscles—the slow burn of the quadriceps, the stiffness of the gastrocnemius, and the torsion of her soleus as her ankles deftly maneuvered around perceived obstacles. She thought of ankles, and then she thought of Clarimonde Ruh, brittle, overweight, innocent Clarimonde Ruh and her daughter. Thrust into such an environment and held under conditions from which no person could escape. The inevitably of their demise must have wore on them, but what made it worse was that their captor continually offered false hope, the belief that if they followed his rules, they might make it out okay after all. The terror was palpable, unconquerable. The only things Brennan had as protection against it were Seeley Booth and her superior intellect—together, they were unstoppable.

Booth had kicked in every door along the corridor, and as they approached the last corner, they realized they needn't bother with another door. Framed by the gloom at the end of the hallway stood an imposing figure; it waved. Brennan eased out just a little from behind her partner—she needed to face this man.

"High noon at the O.K. Corral. No where left to hide, freak show," Booth reminded him. He raised his weapon and casually aimed it at his quarry's chest.

"Temperance, please," pleaded the figure, "you must understand that everything that happened to those women happened so that we could find our ways to each other."

"You expect me to believe that you tortured and mutilated those women out of duty to a person you never even knew existed?"

Cold, hollow laughter reverberated through the warehouse and slapped like an icy wave against her ears. "Oh, how you delight me! You're right, I enjoyed watching those women plead for their lives. But that thrill, that urge, I have that for a reason, and that reason is you. We bring out the best in one another, don't you see?" He moved a step deeper into the inky depths and a step closer to the partners. Neither could see his eyes, but they could both feel him scrutinizing Brennan.

Booth decided to level the playing field a bit. He drew attention back to himself with a mere cock of his gun. "Hey, slime ball, don't look at her, look at me. I'm the one who's gonna shoot you."

The figure shook his head slowly. "Not likely, Agent Booth."

"Oh, really? And why is that?"

"I could be obscure and tell you it's because the FBI frowns on unprovoked shootings."

Booth sucked his teeth sharply. "It would hardly be unprovoked."

"And I could be transparent and tell you it's because you couldn't hit me even aiming squarely at me."

"He could," Brennan added smartly. "He's an unparalleled sniper."

"But in lieu of either of those choices, I shall be genteel and tell you it's because our business transaction is nowhere near concluded. You will not shoot me because I have something that you want."

Despite himself, Booth had to admit he was both curious and nervous. His brain swirled around what the creature could mean, and all sorts of horrific images bobbed across the surface of his mind. But as it was obvious that no answers were forthcoming, he knew he had to stave off any thoughts that could prevent him from keeping a level head. "I don't recall making any deals with you," he said warily.

"Not yet."

"Not ever."

"Whether or not you intended to do business with me, I think I've made it sufficiently clear that I have something you want, and in exchange, all I ask is a kiss from my fair Juliet."

"What planet are you from?" Brennan said with surprise, and if Booth hadn't felt every square inch of the gravity of the situation, he would have laughed at such a remark coming from her.

"Tut-tut, my darling. That's not a very nice thing to say."

"When it comes to you, I stop being nice."

"I will have my kiss."

"Shoot him, Booth," she demanded. Her partner stood there dumbfounded while her eyes urged him onward.

"Bones," he hissed quietly. "Now is not the time.

"And you," he continued, now addressing the shadow, "are going to come with me. No more games, no more tricks. Just because you're named like a circus clown doesn't change the fact that I will take you in by force if you do not comply."

"Again, Agent Booth, I reiterate that you can't—"

"Shut up. Just stop talking!" Brennan's outburst, her vehemence startled both men. "You are not interesting, you're not clever, and you're definitely not the man I love. I revile you."

Giggles obliged and was silent, but the two could easily tell he was furious even without seeing his expression. His carefully laid plans and delicately tended fantasies evaporated before his eyes, Brennan had made sure of it. The figure's right hand jerked. In it was an unmistakable shape, the shape of a pistol. It raised steadily and purposefully.

"Lower you weapon," Booth ordered. He did not. Instead his body faced Brennan, and the pistol set its sights on her heart. It was odd the way his body moved—haltingly, almost robotically, as though all the human essence had been sliced out of him, not that there was much to begin with. Her kinesics training told her nothing now, which was poetic in its own way considering Giggles wasn't one to follow preset rules.

A small shaft of light from the bright moon outside the high windows splintered the total darkness enough that Booth could clearly make out the outline of the killer at the end of the corridor. Booth raised his gun and leveled it squarely at where the man's heart would be if he had one.

"Shoot him, Booth!"

"I can't shoot without a positive I.D."

"We know it's him. He's got a gun pointed at me, for god's sake, shoot!"

"I can't see him!" he snapped at her.

"Put the gun down!" Booth demanded of Giggles. "Put the gun down right now, or I'll shoot! Now!" If he could have seen the face of the assassin, he knew he would be smiling that patronizing and sadistic smile of his. "Last warning. Put the weapon down now, or I will open fire, you sick son of a bitch!"

The killer waved mechanically even as the dry crack of the weapons firing snapped through the resounding silence. The flashes of the two gun muzzles simultaneously ejecting their cartridges gave just enough blinding white light to see the face of the villain, but he was not smiling as Booth had imagined; in fact, his face was as still as death. A deafening roar and the hot smell of gun powder laced with blood flooded the hallway as the silhouette crumpled to its knees. A heart beat later, so did Temperance Brennan.


	11. Epilogue

_**Author's note: **__OMG. IT IS HERE! The ending. One hundred and thirty-one pages of writing. Countless hours of love and devotion, of over-thinking and overwhelming, a combination of days of non-stop writing and periods of too long abandonment. _

_I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but a sequel is in the works. I don't want to write something and then abandon it later, so if I get a good bit of writing in, I'll give myself a reason to continue writing. Look for "The Unfortunate on the Landing" in the future. Just know it won't all be based on Giggles. There are plenty of other dark characters in my mind who want to come out to play. ;)_

_If you liked this story, please, I encourage you to let me know. I know a lot of people have been following this from the beginning, so if you've remained silent this whole time, let me know if I've wrapped it up all right. Thanks to everyone for reading! I've loved having you as an audience!_

**Epilogue**

Three weeks after the shootout at Giggles' house, Brennan found herself in her office at the Jeffersonian pouring over WWII soldiers' notes and X-rays, in much the same way she had passed every day since then. The work was tedious but familiar, just the sort of useful employment that Brennan had come to love in recent days. And best of all, it didn't involve working with Seeley Booth.

Angela sat opposite her. "Sweetie, you should talk to him," she said as if reading her mind. "You haven't answered one of his calls in weeks. He's really worried about you. He was only trying to protect you. David was the one who pointed the gun at you—"

Brennan had stopped listening. Angela had unknowingly thrust her back to the moment in the warehouse when two opposing bullets exploded from their respective guns. The brilliant flash of igniting gun powder illuminated the pale visage of her boyfriend, David Simmons, and not the serial killer, Hubert Giggles, as she had expected. Why he was there and firing at them, she had no idea. All she did know was that the bullet he had actually fired wasn't at all intended for her. It missed her by more than six feet, slamming into the thick wall to her left. So why fire at all? Had he been in the warehouse when she confessed that she didn't love him, and even if he had been, was that reason enough to contemplate killing her? The ludicrous scenario that he was in cahoots with Giggles the whole time tickled the back of her brain; she knew it was crazy, but that didn't stop the macabre wheels from turning. What other explanation could there be?

She didn't love David. When she told Giggles that, she had meant it. She did not feel guilty about not loving him. She told herself she did not feel guilty for not loving him. She insisted that she did not feel guilty about not loving him. And yet despite these protestations, there was something sour and squeamish that roiled in the pit of her stomach. It was agony not knowing.

"Brennan, are you listening to me?"

-----

_A deafening roar and the hot smell of gun powder laced with blood flooded the hallway as the silhouette crumpled to its knees. A heart beat later, so did Temperance Brennan._

_She had seen the face of the shooter, pale white with the veil of death. David Simmons flopped backwards as though some puppeteer had finally severed his marionette's strings. His limbs fell in a jumble; somehow he didn't even look real._

_Brennan sat motionless on her knees. She was relatively sure she heard Booth utter a series of "no's" in horror before radioing desperately for help. Ironically, it came instantaneously. HRT stormed the warehouse, paramedics in the midst of the cluster. If they had been there just moments before, David would have been alive, Giggles would have been captured, and life would have continued much as it always had._

_But David was dead. Her boyfriend of sorts. They had never been formal on the matter—Brennan hadn't allowed him to be—but she supposed she had always associated him with that idea in her own mind. He left things at her place and she at his, things she would now have to recollect because he could never return home—toothbrushes, shampoo, clothes, a couple of Dizzy Gillespie CDs. The anguish and the distress were overwhelming. Someone who had been there for her would no longer be. She had silenced his phone call earlier that day, and now Booth had silenced him forever. Bitter, spiteful irony._

_Scenarios raced through her brain which explained how David could be Giggles and not at the same time. The simplest explanation was usually the right one, but Brennan could not think, not now. _

_An EMT gathered her up in a blanket. It was warm that night, warm enough that sweat gathered along her brow, trailed down her spine and tickled the small of her back, but she accepted the blanket immediately. Swaddled in its thick folds, there was the small comfort that she was getting away from the scene as fast as she could. She had no interest in investigating the warehouse for clues, no desire to see the ashen flesh of her one-time lover._

_As the EMT led her out of the dank pit, she glanced over her shoulder, not at David but at Booth, who was talking stonily to another agent. He looked shell-shocked. She knew the moment he was alone, he would beat himself into the ground. She wanted to run to him, to collapse into him as he would into her, and together they would drown their confusion and sorrows in the comfort of each other's secure embrace. No matter what he had just done to David, he was still her Booth, and they would share each other's pain as no one else could. But the paramedic guided her toward an ambulance, and she went, stealing one last glance at the man who had shot her boyfriend._

-----

Time had not helped stitch up the wound. In fact, it had made things worse, perhaps even pulled it farther apart. Working with Booth since that day had proven near impossible. Every time she saw him, Brennan heard illusory gunshots or smelled hot gunpowder. His words often came across as a dull hum, like the ringing left in her ears after the guns had gone off, and this was only around Booth. Things had grown so uncomfortable, she had sequestered herself in her office and refused to return his phone calls, leaving her team of squints to worry over her absence.

That left the duty of confronting their boss up to Angela, who keenly saw the longing in her friend's eyes. Brennan wanted to be normal again, and Angela perceived that clearer than anyone else in the lab could have, especially after having lost her boyfriend Kirk in the desert not that long ago. She knew all too well what it was to feel disconnected and alone.

Brennan finally realized her friend had asked her a question and snapped out of her morbid reverie. "What? I'm sorry, Ange, I was thinking about a case."

Angela bit the inside of her bottom lip. "You know, you don't have to put up such a front. This is your office, and you can be as open and honest in here as you want. I know you're still hurting."

Without warning and with no way to stop them, tears prickled in the corners of Brennan's eyes. "I can't, Angela. I can't say what I'm thinking anymore without that sick feeling that I'm being spied on. Hubert Giggles escaped that scene with ease, and there's been no sign of him. The rational, anthropological side of me knows that he's made a connection with me—that he believes we share a common culture—and that means he'll be watching me just as he had been. I can't let him in anymore."

"So you're just going to keep us all out?"

"I don't know," she said. Her voice broke, but she quickly stabilized. She imagined this was precisely the sort of scene Giggles would hope for and she'd denied him for weeks. "I don't know what else to do."

"Live your life," Angela said, gripping Brennan's forearm tightly. "Live your life fuller and bigger than you ever did before. We can't do anything about that man yet, but we will. We always catch the bad guy here, don't we." It wasn't a question, and Brennan knew her best friend was right. They were exceedingly good at what they did, and when Giggles did come back for more, they would have him.

Brennan discreetly wiped her eyes with the back of her index finger. She sniffled again—couldn't help it—and said slowly, "Booth shot David."

Angela continued rubbing her friend's arm and staring her in the eyes. "He was trying to protect you."

"I realize that, I do. Every part of me knows that he would never do anything to hurt me, but if you'd seen it. The gun flare, it was like the flash of a camera, and I can't wipe that image of David's death mask from behind my eyes. I don't know how to talk to Booth anymore. Every time I open my mouth to speak to him, nothing comes out. I see David's face, and I freeze. None of this makes sense."

"No more sense than David holding a gun on you in the first place."

"Actually, he never actually did that." There was a small knock on the door, and both of the ladies looked up to see who had just spoken. It was Booth. He was holding a red folder in his hand. A shiver traveled through Brennan's body when she wondered with some horror how much he had heard.

They held one another's gaze for an eternity. Brennan felt the gritty feeling in her mouth again. Images were muddled one on top of the other. Kissing David in the parking lot, kissing Booth in the hallway, gunfire, Giggles' arms, rats in dark, a flashlight going out, mutilated animals on a front porch. They overlapped and blended so seamlessly that she could hardly differentiate when they had happened or even whether they were real.

Brennan caught the sharp intake of breath as Booth at last volunteered to speak. Angela, who had been forgotten on that couch, remained touching her friend. She knew she would have to leave them alone soon enough, but she would lend all of her strength to Brennan for as long as she possibly could.

"It was Giggles all along. Fingerprints on the bullets and butt of the gun confirm Giggles was puppeting him, using our eyes and," he paused momentarily, "our hearts to confuse us. David was already dead when I shot him."

Booth laid the folder on the corner of Brennan's desk and stepped back from it like was a bomb. He examined her carefully as she reached out, her lithe frame flowing as gracefully as it always had, and flipped through its content. She was lovely to watch, even at a distance. Her poise and determination made her irresistible to any man with taste. Booth watched mournfully, terrified that their partnership was on the brink of destruction, and there was nothing he could do about it.

He had shot her boyfriend in a moment of extreme carelessness. Always acquire a positive visual. It was his sniper code, but his heart had overwhelmed his mind, and his snap judgment led to consequences that he could never have foreseen in that moment. His only goals had been to save her life and preserve their partnership. From such innocent hopes came incomprehensible tragedy. To see her so scared and alone, well, it didn't just break his heart, it wrest him in two.

"What is it, sweetie?" Angela asked when she noticed her friend's contemplative face. It was the closest look to the normal Brennan that she'd seen in ages.

"David's autopsy notes. Cause of death was blunt trauma to the lungs—his right lung was punctured with a standard eight-inch kitchen knife. The gunshot was a secondary, postmortem wound to the heart."

Booth amended softly, "Nothing we could have done would have saved him."

Brennan shook her head. "You still shot him," she said. She didn't mean to sound accusatory, but she couldn't reconcile these feelings—that her partner had intended to kill her boyfriend. Whether or not he was dead in the first place, Booth had taken a kill shot. She knew she could forgive him, perhaps she already had, but she didn't know what to do with these memories, these visuals. She still didn't talk to her brother Russ because she felt he had abandoned her after her parents' disappearances, so what would happen between Booth and her?

Angela knew now was as good a time as any to leave these two alone and encourage the healing process. She stood up and said, "I just remembered some pressing sketches Dr. Goodman left on my desk. I've got to take care of them." She squeezed Brennan's shoulder for a moment and whispered, "I'll be right down the hall if you need me. I love you, Brenn." Brennan didn't say anything, but Angela could read in her eyes how grateful she was. She promptly turned and left the partners to themselves.

Booth took the opportunity to ease further into the room and position himself close to Brennan. "Phone records show Giggles placed a three-minute call to David's house right around the time you pulled up to his place. He must have been watching for you, and when he saw you, he called David. Probably posed as a friend or an agent, told him you were in danger, that he should come down to the scene. When he showed up, Giggles ambushed him, stabbed him through the back with the knife. He died quickly."

"Then it's my fault," she said with the sudden revelation.

"No, no, no, Bones. You don't take life away—you can't. You don't have that within you. You give life back."

Brennan laughed bitterly. "Give one example."

"Grant Fine, Malcolm Green." Brennan was silenced. "You set them free. Fine can now move on with his life—he has closure. And without your conviction of his innocence, who knows where the evidence might have led us? And you freed an innocent man. Malcolm Green will get to breathe fresh air and rent an apartment and sleep in a room of his own. You made that all possible because you knew that something wasn't right. You knew it wasn't right, and you never stopped searching for the truth." She remained quiet, but Booth pressed on:

"Giggles set us up. The bastard had the whole thing planned from the minute we rang his doorbell. That ringmaster ran this show the entire time no matter what we thought or did. I should have listened to you, Bones. I should have listened all along." He paused as she swallowed hard to take this all in. "And there's something else you should know.

"When they Luminoled the warehouse walls for blood, the place looked like a Jackson Pollack painting. Tests revealed three other blood types in addition to the Ruhs' A negative: A positive, AB positive, and O positive."

Brennan's eyes sparked with life for a moment as she realized there was more work to do, more people to identify. "That means there are at least three other women he's killed. At least. And we know one of those women was Jenna."

Booth shook his head grimly. "Actually, DNA results on the various samples conclude eight women in all, not including the Ruhs. And since we don't have a DNA sample from Jenna we can compare the results to, we can't be sure if she's there."

"She is," Brennan asserted. If she was certain of anything, it was that Giggles hadn't lied about that conquest.

"Forensic dating shows he's been doing this as far back as seven years ago."

"Then we may never know who those women are," she whispered.

There was silence and then Brennan buried her face in her hands, her shoulders racked with sobs. Booth reached out to her, but his hand stopped short of her shoulder. "Bones, I'm sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen. You're the last person in the world I would ever want to hurt, and I understand if you want to break off the partnership. I can request a transfer—"

Her head shot up and she grabbed Booth's gaze with her tear-stained eyes. "No," she said aghast. Her hand struck out and grasped his wrist; her grip was so tight, Booth could feel the blood throbbing in his veins. "Don't. Please, don't leave."

In an instant, Booth rounded her desk and had his arms around her. She buried her face into his neck, a place that had become increasingly familiar throughout the course of their relationship. She was reminded of the safety she felt here, of the time he had saved her from the mob's inside man at the FBI, Agent Kenton. She had almost died then, and he was there; now here she was, she felt like dying, and he was there with that same strong neck, that same soothing sandalwood-laced smell. "Everybody in my life dies. It's the poison of my job, it spreads to everything I touch."

"I'm still here," he said into her ear.

She pulled back and stared at him as though she had never seen him before. Here was her ally, the closest confidant she had ever had, even more a part of her than Angela was. The thought of Booth walking out of her life was enough to make her breath catch in her throat, for the sensation to go away in her limbs. "For how long though, Booth?"

"Forever, Bones, forever."


End file.
